"Yes--yes," he exclaimed. "After arresting you at three o'clock we're here to give you a clean ticket at five. Couldn't do more than that--what? Regrettable occurrence and all that, but give you something to tell the stay-at-homes about when you get back to--ah----" "Kewanee, Illynoy, General," Sherman was quick to supply. "No town like it this side the pearly gates." "No doubt of it, Sherman," Crandall heartily agreed. "A quiet place, I'll wager. Think I'd relish a touch of your Kewanee after--ah--life on Gibraltar." Jane Gerson, who had been standing in the car, anxiously scanning the milling crowd about the landing stage, caught sight of a white helmet and khaki-clad shoulders pushing through the nearer fringes of travelers. She slipped out of the limousine unseen, and waited for the white helmet to be doffed before her. "I was afraid maybe----" the girl began, her cheeks suddenly flaming. "Afraid that, after all, it wasn't true?" the man she had found in war's vortex finished, his gray eyes compelling hers to tell him their whole message. "Afraid that Captain Cavendish might be as vile a deceiver as Woodhouse? Does Cavendish have to prove himself all over again, little girl?" "No--no!" Her hands fluttered into his, and her lips were parted in a smile. "It's Captain Woodhouse I want to know--always; the man whose pledged word I held to." "It must have been--hard," he murmured. "But you were splendid--splendid!" "No, I was not." Tears came to dim her eyes, and the hands he held trembled. "Once--in one terrible moment this morning--when Jaimihr told us you were going to the signal tower--when we waited--waited to hear that awful noise, my faith failed me. I thought you----" "Forget that moment, Jane, dearest. A saint would have denied faith then." They were silent for a minute, their hearts quailing before the imminent separation. He spoke: "Go back to the States now; go back and show this Hildebrand person you're a wonder--a prize. Show him what I've known more and more surely every moment since that meeting in Calais. But give him fair warning; he's going to lose you." "Lose me?" she echoed. "Inevitably. Listen, girl! In a year my term of service is up, and if the war's over I shall leave the army, come to the States to you, and--and--do you think I could become a good American?" "If--if you have the proper teacher," the girl answered, with a flash of mischief. "All aboard for the _Saxonia_!" It was Consul Reynolds, fussed, perspiring, overwhelmed with the sense of his duty, who bustled up to where the Shermans were chatting with Lady Crandall and the general. Reynolds' sharp eye caught an intimate tableau on the other side of the auto. "And that means you, Miss Step-lively New York," he shouted, "much as I hate to--ah--interrupt." Jane Gerson saw her two precious hampers stemming a way through the crowd on the backs of porters, bound for the tender's deck. She could not let them out of her sight.