they were always hungry; and sometimes, in spite of their
resolution, they descended to torturing each other with talk of the
good things there were in the world to eat.

"Claire makes the most gorgeous apple dumplings!" said Marion on one
of these occasions.

"Apple dumplings? Ye-es," replied Haig judiciously. "But what about
plain dumplings in chicken gravy?"

"Fricassee!" cried Marion.

"No. Maryland."

"Still, Philip, if I had my choice it wouldn't be chicken at all."

"What then?"

"Potatoes. Big, baked potatoes, split open, you know, with butter and
salt and paprika."

"Or sweet potatoes swimming in butter."

"And salad--lettuce and tomatoes and oil and vinegar."

"And then pie. Think of blackberry pie!"

"And jam. I do love jam spread on toast."

"I'll tell you something," said Haig recklessly. "I could even eat
sauerkraut!"

Their worst craving was for salt. Marion could fairly taste the spray
of the Atlantic on the bathing beaches. She dreamt of salt,--barrels
of salt and oceans of salt and caves she had read of in which salt
hung in glittering stalactites. And Haig too. He described a desert
where salt had risen to the surface and gleamed in crystals in the
sand. And once he had lived a long time on salt pork, which he had
thought the most insufferable food. But now! The taste of it came back
to him, and went tingling through every nerve.

To free their minds from such tormenting memories, Haig went deep into
his adventures, his wanderings, his search for excitements. He told
her of strange lands and peoples, of the beautiful spots of the world,
of battles and perils and escapes,--everything he had been through,
with one exception. That--the story of Paris--was still a closed book
to her. And similarly, there was one chapter of her life that she did
not open to him. A certain delicacy, rendered more vital by their very
situation, in which few delicacies could be maintained, restrained
them from the uttermost self-revelation. The one subject that was not
touched upon in the most intimate of their conversations was that
dearest to Marion's heart and most incomprehensible to Haig's reason.
Partly this avoidance was intuitive, and partly deliberate; where
there was so much suffering that could not be escaped, they were
scrupulous to inflict upon each other no unnecessary pain or
embarrassment. Between a more common man and a less fastidious woman,
placed in such propinquity, there would almost i