esn't it?"

Emotion swelled his heart and made him husky--love and patriotism,
pride and hope, and a hot burst of courage.

"What if we strike a mine?" she asked.

"I wouldn't care so much. It would give me a chance to save you."

Overhead they were signalling the shore with a white light. Along
with the new emotions that were choking him came an unaccustomed
impulse of boastfulness.

"I can read that," he said when she ignored his offer to save her.
"Of course it's code, but I can spell it out."

He made a move to step forward and watch the signaler, but she put
her hand on his arm.

"Don't go. I'm nervous, Cecil," she said.

She had called him by his first name. It shook him profoundly, that
and the touch of her hand on his arm.

"Oh, I love you, love you!" he said hoarsely. But he did not try to
take her in his arms, or attempt to caress the hand that still clung
to him. He stood very erect, looking at the shadowy outline of her.
Then, her long scarf blowing toward him, he took the end of it and
kissed that very gravely.

"I would die for you," he said.

Then Lethway joined them.

III

London was not kind to him. He had felt, like many Canadians, that
in going to England he was going home. But England was cold.

Not the people on the streets. They liked the Canadians and they
cheered them when their own regiments went by unhailed. It appealed
to their rampant patriotism that these men had come from across the
sea to join hands with them against common foe. But in the clubs,
where his letters admitted the boy, there was a different
atmosphere. Young British officers were either cool or, much worse,
patronising. They were inclined to suspect that his quiet confidence
was swanking. One day at luncheon he drank a glass of wine, not
because he wanted it but because he did not like to refuse. The
result was unfortunate. It loosened his tongue a bit, and he
mentioned the medals.

Not noisily, of course. In an offhand manner, to his next neighbor.
It went round the table, and a sort of icy silence, after that,
greeted his small sallies. He never knew what the trouble was, but
his heart was heavy in him.

And it rained.

It was always raining. He had very little money beyond his pay, and
the constant hiring of taxicabs worried him. Now and then he saw
some one he knew, down from Salisbury for a holiday, but they had
been over long enough to know their way about. They had engagements,
things to buy.