t his head nearer, and lowered his pleasant voice to a coaxing,
confidential tone.

"You'll think me a presumptuous kind of fellow for talking like this,
won't you, Miss Mildare? But the circumstances are exceptional, aren't
they? We're shut up away from the big world outside in a little world of
our own, and--such chances fall to every man and most of the women here: a
shrapnel bullet or a shell-splinter might stop me before another hour goes
by, from ever saying--what I've felt for weeks on end had got to be
said--what I'd risk a dozen lives, if I had 'em, to get the opportunity of
saying to you." His hot eagerness frightened her. Her downcast eyelids
quivered, and her flushed maiden-face shrank from him.

"Oh, don't be angry! Don't move away!" Beauvayse entreated; for Lynette's
anxious glance had gone in search of the Mother-Superior, with whom Saxham
was now discussing the nuns' idea of utilising the Convent as a
Convalescent Hospital. In another instant she would have taken refuge by
her side. "If you knew how I have thought of you and dreamed of you since
I saw you! If you could only understand how I shall think of you now! If
you could only realise how awfully, utterly strange it is to feel as I am
feeling!" His voice was a tremulous, fervent whisper. His eyes gleamed
like emeralds in the shadow of the wide-brimmed felt hat. "And if I die
to-day, it won't end there. I shall think of you, and long for you, and
worship you wherever I am!"

"Oh, why do you talk to me like this?"

Lynette's whisper was as tremulous as Beauvayse's own. Her eyes lifted to
the glowing, ardent face for one shy instant, and found it good to look
upon. Men, young and not undesirable, had tried to make love to her
before, at dances and parties and picnics to which she had been chaperoned
by the Mayor's wife. But the first hot glance, the first word that carried
the vibration of a passionate meaning, had wakened the old terror in her,
and bidden her escape. The nymph had always taken flight at the first step
upon the bank, the first rustle of the sedges. She had never lingered to
feel the air stirred by another burning breath. She had never asked any
one of those other men why he talked like that. Beauvayse went on:

"Perhaps I even seem a little mad to you--fellows have told me lately that
I went on as if I had a tile off. Perhaps I'm what the Scotch call 'fey.'
I've got Highland blood in me, anyhow. And you have set it on fire, I
think