er, not of sugar, in his throat and he knew it, and his fine blue
eyes and thin, sad face were pathetic enough to move any woman's heart
had not Miss Ray been so concerned about the tea.

"You would have been able to return to duty days ago," said she,
tendering the steaming cup and obviously ignoring his remark, "had you
come right to hospital as Dr. Shiels directed, instead of scampering out
to the front again. You thought more of the brevet, of course, than the
gash. What a mercy it glanced on the rib! Only--such wounds are ever so
much harder to stanch and dress."

"You--knew about it, then?" he asked with reviving hope.

"Of course. We _all_ knew," responded Miss Ray, well aware of the fact
that he would have been unaccountably and infinitely happier had it been
she alone. "That is our profession. But about the brevet. Surely you
ought to be pleased. Captain in your first engagement!"

"Oh, it's only a recommendation," he answered, "and may be as far away
as--any other engagement--of mine, that is." And in saying it poor
Stuyvesant realized it was an asinine thing. So, alack, did she! An
instant agone she was biting her pretty red lips for letting the word
escape her, but his fatuity gave her all the advantage in spite of
herself. It was the play to see nothing that called for reply in his
allusion. So there was none.

A carriage was coming up the Luneta full tilt, and though still six
hundred yards away, she saw and knew it to be Stuyvesant's returning.
But he saw nothing beyond her glowing face. Mrs. Brent began to sing in
the salon, a symptom so unusual that it could only mean that she
contemplated coming back and was giving warning. Time was priceless, yet
here he stood trembling, irresolute. Would nothing help him?

"You speak of my--engagement," he blundered blindly on. "I wish you'd
tell me--about yours."

"Mine? Oh,--with the Red Cross, you mean? And shame be to you, Maidie
Ray, you knew--you well knew--he didn't."

"I mean--to Mr. Foster. Mrs. Brent has just told me----"

"Mrs. Brent!" interposes Miss Ray in a flutter of amaze. That carriage
is coming nearer every instant, driving like mad, Brent on the back seat
and a whip-lashing demon on the box. There will be no time for
love-tales once that burly warrior returns to his own. Yet she is
fencing, parrying, holding him at bay, for his heart is bubbling over
with the torrent of its love and yearning and pleading.

What are bullet-wounds and brev