"I haven't lived for two years. Oh, Jimmy! Help me to live a little!
Life's so short, now."

Her eyes disturbed him, strained and pathetic; the sight of her arms; the
scent of the flower disturbed him; he felt his cheeks growing warm, and
looked down.

She slipped suddenly forward on to her knees at his feet, took his hand,
pressed it with both of hers, and murmured:

"Love me a little! What else is there? Oh! Jimmy, what else is there?"

And with the scent of the flower, crushed by their hands, stirring his
senses, Fort thought: 'Ah, what else is there, in these forsaken days?'

To Jimmy Fort, who had a sense of humour, and was in some sort a
philosopher, the haphazard way life settled things seldom failed to seem
amusing. But when he walked away from Leila's he was pensive. She was a
good sort, a pretty creature, a sportswoman, an enchantress; but--she was
decidedly mature. And here he was--involved in helping her to "live";
involved almost alarmingly, for there had been no mistaking the fact that
she had really fallen in love with him.

This was flattering and sweet. Times were sad, and pleasure scarce,
but--! The roving instinct which had kept him, from his youth up,
rolling about the world, shied instinctively at bonds, however pleasant,
the strength and thickness of which he could not gauge; or, was it that
perhaps for the first time in his life he had been peeping into fairyland
of late, and this affair with Leila was by no means fairyland? He had
another reason, more unconscious, for uneasiness. His heart, for all his
wanderings, was soft, he had always found it difficult to hurt anyone,
especially anyone who did him the honour to love him. A sort of
presentiment weighed on him while he walked the moonlit streets at this
most empty hour, when even the late taxis had ceased to run. Would she
want him to marry her? Would it be his duty, if she did? And then he
found himself thinking of the concert, and that girl's face, listening to
the tales he was telling her. 'Deuced queer world,' he thought, 'the way
things go! I wonder what she would think of us, if she knew--and that
good padre! Phew!'

He made such very slow progress, for fear of giving way in his leg, and
having to spend the night on a door-step, that he had plenty of time for
rumination; but since it brought him no confidence whatever, he began at
last to feel: 'Well; it might be a lot worse. Take the goods the gods
send you and