ou're mixing up two things," he said, with a smile. "Love and
marriage. Many people love and don't marry, just as many marry and
don't love. Now once you did tell me that you loved me, and so you
accepted my love. There's no getting out of it. I've given you
everything I've got, and you can't throw it away. The question is--what
are you going to do with it? What are you going to do with me?"

His sophistries frightened her; but she cut through them.

"Isn't it rather a question of what you're going to do with yourself?"

"If you give me up I don't care a hang what becomes of me." He came
very near and his voice was dangerously soft. "Phyllis dear, I do love
you with all my heart. Why won't you marry me?"

But a hateful scene rushed to her memory. She drew herself up.

"Why are my father and you persecuting me to marry you?"

"Your father?" he interrupted, in astonishment. "When?"

She named the day, Wednesday of last week. In desperation she told him
what had happened. The poor child was fighting for her soul against
great odds.

"It's a conspiracy to get me round to your way of thinking. You want me
to be a pro-German like yourselves, and I won't be a pro-German, and I
think it wicked even to talk to pro-Germans!"

She rose, all sobs, fluster, and heroism, and walked away. He strode a
step or two and stood in front of her with his hands on her shoulders.

"I've never spoken to your father in that way about you. Never. Not a
word has passed my lips about my caring for you. On my word of honour.
On Tuesday night I left your father's house never to go there again. I
told him so."

She writhed out of his grasp and spread the palms of her hands against
him. "Please don't," she said, and seeing that she stood her ground, he
made no further attempt to touch her. The austerity of her grey nurse's
uniform gave a touch of pathos to her childish, blue-eyed comeliness
and her pretty attitude of defiance.

"I suppose," she said, "he was too pro-German even for you."

He looked at her for a long time disconcertingly: so disconcertingly
and with so much pain and mysterious hesitation in his eyes as to set
even Phyllis's simple mind a-wondering and to make her emphasize it, in
her report of the matter to Betty, as extraordinary and frightening. It
seemed, so she explained, in her innocent way, that he had discovered
something horrible about her father which he shrank from telling her.
But if they had quarrelled so bitter