moved slightly, as if she were tired of remaining in one position,
and were shifting to an easier one, but still she did not speak, nor did
she raise her eyes to look at him.

"I'm not fit to be your husband," he said. "I'm not fit to be any
woman's husband, but much less yours. Even now, when I 'm standing here
talking to you in this safety, the thought of ... of being out there
makes me shiver with fear. It's the thought of ... of dying!... I think
and think of all those young chaps, all the fellows I knew, robbed of
their right to live and love, as I love you, and work and make their end
in decency and peace ... and I can't bear it. I want to save myself from
the wreckage ... to hide myself in safety until this ... this horror is
ended!" He paused for a while, as if he were searching for words and
then he went on. "There was an officer in my carriage to-day ... going
on to Whimple ... and he told me about poison gas ... the men died in
frightful agony, he said ... and then he talked about machine guns....
'They can perforate a man like a postage stamp,' he said.... Isn't it
vile, Mary?"

Her head was still bent, and as she did not make an answer to him, he
turned to look away from her. He remembered how Sheila Morgan, in her
anger at his cowardice, had struck him in the face and had furiously
bidden him to leave her.... Mary would not strike him, but she, too,
would bid him to go from her....

He felt her hand on his arm.

"Quinny!" she said very softly, and he turned to find her standing
nearer to him and looking up at him with no less love than she had
looked at him before he had made his confession to her.

"I don't love you, Quinny, only for what's fine in you," she said, and
her speech was full of hesitation as if she could not adequately express
her meaning. "I love you ... for _all_ of you. I just take the bad with
the good, and ... and make the best of it, dear!"

"You still want me, Mary?..."

"My dear," she said, half laughing and half crying, "I've always wanted
you!... Oh, what's the good," she went on with an impetuous rush of
words, "of loving a man only when he comes up to your expectations. I
want to love you even when you don't come up to my expectations,
Quinny, and I do love you, dear. It hasn't anything to do with whether
you're brave or not brave, or good or bad, or great or common. I just
love you ... don't you see?... because you're _you_!..."

He stared at her incredulously. He had be