ichmond just to be able to look at you for a bit longer. I have been in
love with you for quite a year!"

Doubt being cast upon his veracity, he explained his possession of her
photograph, which fact she had long been aware of.

"I used to write poems about your eyes and your lips which I thought the
most alluring in the world. Did I dream I should ever see and kiss them
in reality?"

Silence again for a further interval of rapture.

"Now you will know how I have been feeling about going out to India! How
is it possible for me to leave you behind? Can't we be married in a
week?"

"We could," said Kitty, "but you forget there are others who will have
something to say to that."

"Your parents?"

"Undoubtedly. One daughter in India is enough for Mother. I am not at
all sure she will consent." It was very mischievous of her to distress
him for the sake of delighting in the proofs of his abject slavery to
herself, but Kitty was nothing if not human, and realising the
completeness of her own surrender, was pleased to get back a little of
her own.

His woe-begone look was almost melodramatic. "If they refuse their
consent, what will you do?"

"I suppose I shall have to obey. I'm not of age, you know," said Kitty
knowing full well that she was bound to have her own way, her parents
having long ago resigned themselves to her strength of character and
determination.

"Then I'll desert and enlist under another name that I might be killed
by a German bullet," he said gloomily.

"But you mightn't be killed. You might just be smashed up instead,
invalided out without a limb, or, worse still, be made unrecognisable!"

Horrible prospect! Jack's military ardour cooled visibly. "Anyhow, it
would be their fault."

"And I should chase after you and beg of you to marry me, all the
same,--limbless and unrecognisable as you may be!"

"You would? You said just now you would have to obey."

"Of course I would obey, but only for a time. Do you think I shall ever
give you up, even if the skies were to fall?"

That finished it. Jack was in heaven again, and the time passed with
amazing rapidity.

Meanwhile, Joyce had been to see Baby Douglas asleep in his crib and was
weighing the pros and cons of her problem with agonised uncertainty. He
was now as healthy as any normal infant of his age, and was in the care
of an experienced and trustworthy nurse. At Wynthrop Manor he would be
in the lap of luxury, wanting for nothing, and