ing now, for every word which he spoke was
like a knife-thrust straight into her heart.

"Being so far away from home," he continued, speaking slowly and very
earnestly now, in a voice that quivered and shook with the depth of the
sentiment within him, "being so far away from home would have been like
hell to me at times. I don't know what there is, Elsa, about this land
of Hungary! how it holds and enchains us! but at times I felt that I
must lie down and die if I did not see our maize-fields bordered with
the tall sunflowers, our distant, low-lying horizon on which the rising
and the setting sun paints such glowing colours. This land of Australia
was beautiful too: there were fine fields of corn and vast lands
stretching out as far as the eye could reach; but it was not Hungary.
There were no white oxen with long, slender horns toiling patiently up
the dusty high roads, the storks did not build their nests in the tall
acacia trees, nor did the arms of distant wells stretch up toward the
sky. It was not Hungary, Elsa! and it would have been hell but for
thinking of you. The life of an exile takes all the life out of one. I
have heard of some of our Hungarian lads out in America who get so ill
with homesickness that they either die or become vicious. But then," he
added, with a quick, characteristic return to his habitual light-hearted
gaiety, "it isn't everyone who is far from home who has such a bright
star as I had to gaze at in my mind . . . when it came night time and
the lights were put out . . ."

"Andor!" she pleaded.

But he would not let her speak just then. He had not yet told her all
that there was to say, and perhaps the innate good-heartedness in him
suggested that she was discomposed, that she would prefer to sit quietly
and listen whilst she collected her thoughts and got over the surprise
of his sudden arrival.

"Do you know, Elsa," he now said gaily, "I chalked up the days--made
marks, I mean, in a book which I bought in Fiume the day before we
sailed. Seven hundred and thirty days--for I never meant to stay away
more than two years; and every evening in my bunk on board ship and
afterwards in the farm where I lodged, I scratched out one of the marks
and seemed to feel myself getting a little bit nearer and then nearer to
you. By the Saints, my dove," he added, with a merry laugh, "but you
should have seen me the time I got cheated out of one of those
scratches. I had forgotten that accursed twenty