"If!" echoed Tony. "That's a darned cruel way to put it!" And he looked so much like the nicest Billiken ever seen on earth that I really did love him, though not quite in the way he wanted. "No doubt I am cruel as well as dishonourable," I replied frigidly. "So now you can easily stop loving me, can't you?" "No, I can't," he said. "See here, Peggy, what can I say or do to make things right? I think you're the kindest and dearest and most honourable girl whoever lived, and I----" "Prove it then!" I cried. And I laid my hands on his. "How? What can I do?" "Tell me the whole truth about what happened last night. Oh--I'm not trying to bribe you! I don't promise if you do tell, that I'll love you, or marry you, or anything important of that sort. All I promise is to be so grateful, so glad, that--who knows how I may feel to you afterward? And anyhow, I'll let you kiss me, this very night--on my cheek." "You will? Yet--you say you're not bribing me! You couldn't offer me a much bigger bribe. Why, Peggy, I'd be happy just to die--after getting a kiss from you--even on your cheek!" and he laughed at himself forlornly. "You're a dear boy, Tony," I said, crushed with remorse. "The kiss won't be a bribe, either. It will be a token of--of--I hardly know what. But partly of gratitude, the deepest gratitude, if you can trust me enough to believe I'll be true." "I do believe that, indeed I do believe it, forever. And--and--by Jove! I _will_ tell you," he broke out, with a kind of breathless gasp. "You're too strong for me, Peggy. You've _got_ me! But after all, there's no such great harm in telling, now. It's different from last night. Then I didn't know--nobody knew, I suppose--what the upshot of certain things might be. As it's turned out, some of the story will have to be known. Not all--but the part you want to know most." "Tell me that," I pleaded. "You swear you'll never breathe anything I say to you?" "I swear I never will, until you give me leave." "Well, then, those three explosions you heard last night weren't explosions at all. _They were shots from our field guns._ But I'll tell you what happened exactly--both sides of the story." "Both sides? How is it there are two?" "Well, there's March's side, and----" "And--what other one?" "And Major Vandyke's side." "I knew it!" I cried out sharply. "I knew that man would try to ruin Eagle. I should like to shoot him with one of those very guns." "Peggy, you mustn't talk like that," Tony warned me. "If you do, I can't go on." "Forgive me," I said, and let him hold my hand, happy for a moment in the belief that he was soothing me.