Noel, who wants the love and protection not of a 'man' but
of a good man. No, Captain Fort, no!"

Fort bit his lips. "I'm clearly not a good man in your sense of the
word; but I love her terribly, and I would protect her. I don't in the
least know whether she'll have me. I don't expect her to, naturally. But
I warn you that I mean to ask her, and to wait for her. I'm so much in
love that I can do nothing else."

"The man who is truly in love does what is best for the one he loves."
Fort bent his head; he felt as if he were at school again, confronting
his head-master. "That's true," he said. "And I shall never trade on
her position. If she can't feel anything for me now or in the future,
I shan't trouble her, you may be sure of that. But if by some wonderful
chance she should, I know I can make her happy, sir."

"She is a child."

"No, she's not a child," said Fort stubbornly.

Pierson touched the lapel of his new tunic. "Captain Fort, I am going
far away from her, and leaving her without protection. I trust to your
chivalry not to ask her, till I come back."

Fort threw back his head. "No, no, I won't accept that position. With
or without your presence the facts will be the same. Either she can love
me, or she can't. If she can, she'll be happier with me. If she can't,
there's an end of it."

Pierson came slowly up to him. "In my view," he said, "you are as bound
to Leila as if you were married to her."

"You can't, expect me to take the priest's view, sir."

Pierson's lips trembled.

"You call it a priest's view; I think it is only the view of a man of
honour."

Fort reddened. "That's for my conscience," he said stubbornly. "I can't
tell you, and I'm not going to, how things began. I was a fool. But I
did my best, and I know that Leila doesn't think I'm bound. If she had,
she would never have gone. When there's no feeling--there never was
real feeling on my side--and when there's this terribly real feeling for
Noel, which I never sought, which I tried to keep down, which I ran away
from--"

"Did you?"

"Yes. To go on with the other was foul. I should have thought you might
have seen that, sir; but I did go on with it. It was Leila who made an
end."

"Leila behaved nobly, I think."

"She was splendid; but that doesn't make me a brute.".

Pierson turned away to the window, whence he must see Noel.

"It is repugnant to me," he said. "Is there never to be any purity in
her life?"

"Is there never