ned here in shameful security if I could have gone back to
France and helped? I would have done anything--anything, I tell
you--scrubbed the floors of hospitals, worked my fingers to the
bone----"

"I'll wait till you go," he said.... "They'll clear your record very
soon, I expect. I'll wait. And we'll go together. Shall we, Thessa?"

But she had not seemed to hear him; her dark eyes grew remote, her
gaze swept the sapphire distance. It was his hand laid lightly over
hers that aroused her, and she withdrew her fingers with a frown of
remonstrance.

"Won't you let me speak?" he said. "Won't you let me tell you what my
heart tells me?"

She shook her head slowly:

"I don't desire to hear yet--I don't know where my own heart--or even
my mind is--or what I think about--anything. Please be reasonable."
She stole a look at him to see how he was taking it, and there was
concern enough in her glance to give him a certain amount of hope had
he noticed it.

"You like me, Thessa, don't you?" he urged.

"Have I not admitted it? Do you know that you are becoming a serious
responsibility to me? You worry me, too! You are like a boy with all
your emotions reflected on your features and every thought perfectly
unconcealed and every impulse followed by unconsidered behaviour.

"Be reasonable. I have asked it a hundred times of you in vain. I
shall ask it, probably, innumerable times before you comply with my
request. Don't show so plainly that you imagine yourself in love. It
embarrasses me, it annoys Garry, and I don't know what his family will
think----"

"But if I _am_ in love, why not----"

"Does one advertise all one's most intimate and secret and--and sacred
emotions?" she interrupted in sudden and breathless annoyance. "It is
not the way that successful courtship is conducted, I warn you! It is
not delicate, it is not considerate, it is not sensible.... And I _do_
want you to--to be always--sensible and considerate. I _want_ to like
you."

He looked at her in a sort of dazed way:

"I'll try to please you," he said. "But it seems to confuse
me--being so suddenly bowled over--a thing like that rather knocks
a man out--so unexpected, you know!--and there isn't much use
pretending," he went on excitedly. "I can't see anybody else in
the world except you! I can't think of anybody else! I'm madly in
love--blindly, desperately----"

"Oh, please, _please_!" she remonstrated. "I'm not a girl to be taken
by storm! I've s