ink intensely for the
merest fraction of a moment, and turned. 'Honestly, though, I think he
immensely exaggerated the likeness. As for...'

He touched her arm, and they stopped again, face to face. 'Tell me what
difference exactly you see,' he said. 'I am quite myself again now,
honestly; please tell me just the very worst you think.'

'I think, to begin with,' she began, with exaggerated candour, 'his is
rather a detestable face.'

'And mine?' he said gravely.

'Why--very troubled; oh yes--but his was like some bird of prey.
Yours--what mad stuff to talk like this!--not the least symptom, that I
can see, of--why, the "prey," you know.'

They had come to the wicket in the dark thorny hedge. 'Would it be very
dreadful to walk on a little--just to finish?'

'Very,' she said, turning as gravely at his side.

'What I wanted to say was--' began Lawford, and forgetting altogether
the thread by which he hoped to lead up to what he really wanted to
say, broke off lamely; 'I should have thought you would have absolutely
despised a coward.'

'It would be rather absurd to despise what one so horribly well
understands. Besides, we weren't cowards--we weren't cowards a bit. My
childhood was one long, reiterated terror--nights and nights of it. But
I never had the pluck to tell any one. No one so much as dreamt of
the company I had. Ah, and you didn't see either that my heart was
absolutely in my mouth, that I was shrivelled up with fear, even at
sight of the fear on your face in the dark. There's absolutely nothing
so catching. So, you see, I do know a little what nerves are; and
dream too sometimes, though I don't choose charnelhouses if I can get a
comfortable bed. A coward! May I really say that to ask my help was one
of the bravest things in a man I ever heard of. Bullets--that kind of
courage--no real woman cares twopence for bullets. An old aunt of mine
stared a man right out of the house with the thing in her face. Anyhow,
whether I may or not, I do say it. So now we are quits.'

'Will you--' began Lawford, and stopped. 'What I wanted to say was,'
he jerked on, 'it is sheer horrible hypocrisy to be talking to you like
this--though you will never have the faintest idea of what it has meant
and done for me. I mean... And yet, and yet, I do feel when just for
the least moment I forget what I am, and that isn't very often, when
I forget what I have become and what I must go back to--I feel that I
haven't any business