like him--at
least, so he will tell you.)

NORWOOD (as soon as they are alone). My darling!

KATE. Cyril!

(He takes her hands and kisses them. He would kiss her face, but she
is not quite ready for this.)

NORWOOD. You let me yesterday. Why mayn't I kiss you to-day?

KATE. Not just yet, dear. I want to talk to you. Come and sit down.

(They sit on the sofa together.)

NORWOOD. You aren't sorry for what you said yesterday?

KATE (looking at him thoughtfully, and then shaking her head). No.

NORWOOD. Then what's happened?

KATE. I've just had a letter from Dennis.

NORWOOD (anxiously). Dennis--your husband?

KATE. Yes.

NORWOOD. Where does he write from?

KATE. India.

NORWOOD. Oh, well!

KATE. He says I may expect him home almost as soon as I get the
letter.

NORWOOD. Good Heavens!

KATE. Yes. . . .

NORWOOD (always hopeful). Perhaps he didn't catch the boat that he
expected to. Wouldn't he have cabled from somewhere on the way?

KATE. You can't depend on cables nowadays. _I_ don't know--What are we
to do, Cyril?

NORWOOD. You know what I always wanted you to do. (He takes her hands)
Come away with me.

KATE (doubtfully). And let Dennis come home and find--an empty house?

NORWOOD (eagerly). You are nothing to him, and he is nothing to you. A
war-wedding!--after you'd been engaged to each other for a week! And
forty-eight hours afterwards he is sent out to India--and you haven't
seen him since.

KATE. Yes. I keep telling myself that.

NORWOOD. The world may say that you're his wife and he's your husband,
but--what do you know of him? He won't even be the boy you married.
He'll be a stranger whom you'll hardly recognise. And you aren't the
girl _he_ married. You're a woman now, and you're just beginning to
learn what love is. Come with _me_.

KATE. It's true, it's true. But he _has_ been fighting for us. And to
come home again after those four years of exile, and find--

NORWOOD. Exile--that's making much too much of it. He's come through
the war safely, and he's probably had what he'd call a topping good
time. Like enough he's been in love half-a-dozen times himself
since--on leave in India and that sort of thing. India! Well, you
should read Kipling.

KATE. I wonder. Of course, as you say, I don't know him. But I feel
that we should be happier afterwards if we were quite straight about
it and told him just what had happened. If he had been doing what you
say, he would understand-