"I _am_ honoured! Quite a triumphal procession!" she gasped, with blue lips. The two schoolboys had scampered off to join in the chase. Jean was preparing to follow Miggles and her supporters, when a hand was laid on her arm, and Robert Gloucester's voice spoke in her ear: "You and I are going on to the wood." Jean jerked herself free with a haughty air. "Excuse me, I am going home. I must look after Miss Miggs." "Miss Miggs has plenty of helpers. She doesn't need you. I do. Be kind to me, Jean. I've waited so long." So long! It was not yet a fortnight since he had arrived in England; but time has different values, as Jean had discovered for herself. These last days had counted for more in life than all the years which had gone before. She looked for one moment into the brown eyes bent upon her, then hastily lowered her lids. But she turned down hill in the direction of the wood. There was nothing in the world so mad or impossible that she could have refused Robert Gloucester when he looked at her with his clear eyes lighted by that flame. They walked in silence along the quiet lane, golden with buttercups, into the cool shadow of the wood. "Now!" said Jean's heart, beating painfully against her side. "Now!" She was not unversed in occasions of the kind, and as a rule had no difficulty in "heading off" her suitor by a baffling flow of conversation, but to-day no words would come. She looked at the soft carpet of moss beneath her feet; she looked at the branches overhead; she looked down the gladelike vista, and saw ahead a green space encircled by trees--a sunlit, sun-kissed space, doubly bright from contrast with the surrounding shade. "There!" said the voice in her heart. "It will be there." It seemed fitting that Robert Gloucester should tell his love in the light and the sun. Right into the centre of the sunny space they walked, and as by a mutual impulse halted, face to face. For once Robert's radiant calm was eclipsed. Before the tremendous purport of the moment, confidence, tranquillity, all the varied qualities which combined to sustain the equilibrium of his character, were swept aside as though they had never been. The world held but one person, and that was Jean; if Jean failed him, nothing was left. At that moment the physical strain of long sojourn abroad showed itself painfully in sunken cheek and pallid hue. In the light grey clothes, which hung so loosely on his thin form, he looked like the ghost of a man, a ghost with living eyes--glowing, burning eyes, aflame with love and dread. He stood with hands clasped at his back, not daring a touch. "Jean!" he said breathlessly, "I am a beggar at your gate, I am starving, Jean, and I have nothing to offer you--nothing but myself and my love!"