tations, and
quietly asked:

"Where?"

He told her in a few words, adding:

"Bonsecours won't give his permission unless you agree."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

But she knew. From a multitude of small things, and with an intuition
almost divine, she read another chapter of the great surgeon's nobility,
and turned her eyes again toward the rainbow east. It was perhaps what
she saw there in the changing sunrise that impelled her to whisper
softly:

"I hope you'll always be as brave as you were last night, Jeb."

His cheeks burned, but he faced her without flinching and replied:

"I'm never going to run away again, if that's what you mean!"

"I had not intended to put it so cruelly, Jeb. You've done a great thing
to-night, because you conquered two enemies at the same time--the one
within you being infinitely a harder fight than the one without. I
appreciate that, and am glad for you."

"I want you to forget that--that disgrace at the shell hole," he said,
doggedly.

"Forget?" Her voice broke hysterically, and her eyes filled with tears
of pity. "Ask me to forgive it, Jeb, and I may--but, forget it? Oh, how
can I? Don't you understand?--I _saw_ it! I _saw_ it!"

"Stop, stop--please!" he cried huskily, passing his hand across his
face. "Then don't forget, if--if you can't; but I'd hate to think of the
Colonel, and Aunt Sallie, and----"

"Your secret is safe, if that's what you fear," she said, now as
composedly as she had a moment before been moved. Again, for half a
minute, she faced the sunrise, when her voice came wistfully:

"Oh, God, if--if I just hadn't _seen_ it!"

He realized with full conviction that an impassable gulf lay between him
and this girl. It was not his debasing weakness, so much as her
discovery of it, that would forever stamp him with the brand of shame.
The Arab sheik who one time said: "A thief may loot my tent and I will
curse all thieves, but do I catch him at it and he dies!"--expressed the
mind of all humanity. Marian had _seen_ Jeb; and this meant that he was
dead to her.

He watched her for a moment longer, then in a dispirited voice asked:

"Shall I tell Bonsecours it's all right for me to go?"

Without taking her face from the east, she answered evenly:

"Yes; tell him it's all right for you to go. I am praying God to watch
over you, and--and make you truly worthy of a place among our soldiers
from home."

He glanced back, and saw, far beyond the quadrangle, two
str