“I wanted to do something,” she declared, in a tone of self-defense. “I couldn’t help it when I knew the need was going to be so great. We didn’t see that all at once, because we thought the war was going to be over in a very little while. But when we began to realize it wasn’t—” “Oh, I don’t say you did it all on my account.” Though this was meant to provoke either admission or denial, she glided over it. “It wasn’t easy to do anything in New York, because we hadn’t got that far as yet; and so I naturally went to Canada. When I did so Annette gave me a line of introduction to Evelyn.” “And you told her about me.” She fell into my trap so far as to say: “I didn’t tell her. I simply let her guess.” “Guess what?” “All I ever said to her in words was to ask her never to mention my name to you.” “But why?” “I did the same with Lady Rideover when she took me on at Taplow.” “Why—again?” “For the reason that—that if you ever came to find out what I was doing you’d misunderstand it; just as I see you—you do.” “But I don’t. I don’t misunderstand it when I say that in going to my sisters you wanted to be—you mustn’t be offended!—you wanted to be near me—to watch over me as much as possible.” “You were the only man I knew at that time who’d taken the actual step of going to the war. If there’d been any others—” “It wouldn’t have mattered if there’d been a hundred. I don’t misunderstand it when I say that as soon as you knew I was going home by this boat you arranged—” “To go home by it too,” she forestalled, quickly, “so that you should have somebody near you who could get about in the normal way in case there was danger. I admit that. It’s perfectly true.” She turned round on me with fire in her manner as well as in her eyes. “But what do you think I’m going home for?” I repeated what she had said a few days before: “You’re going home on account of your father—and to interest him and other Americans in American duty as to the war.” “That’s a reason; it’s the reason I find it easiest to give. But I mustn’t hide it from you now that—that I’ve—I’ve another.” [Illustration: “You’re going home to marry me.” “How can I be going home to marry you, when—when I never knew till within half an hour that you—that you cared anything about me?”] I made one of my long mental leaps. I made it as a man might take the one chance of life in leaping a crevasse, knowing that there are more chances that he will be dashed to pieces in the chasm. “You’re going home to be married.” There was a kind of awe in the way she drew off from me. “You’re extraordinary,” she breathed, faintly. “Miss Ogden didn’t tell you that.” I had not cleared the crevasse. I was struggling desperately on the edge of it, while beneath me was the abyss. “You’re going home to marry me.”