And she was thinking: “Is this all it is going to mean--his coming home--our being together? And I was almost his wife!” “So it was my mother you were talking to in the study? I thought I heard a man's voice.” “It was the doctor. Your mother was not quite herself this evening. He came in to see her, but he does not think she is ill. 'Rest and change,' he says she needs.” Paul gave the words a certain depth of consideration. “Are you as well as usual, Moya?” “Oh, I am always well,” she answered cheerlessly. “I seem to thrive on anything--everything,” she corrected herself, and blushed. The blush made him gasp. “You are more beautiful than ever. I had forgotten that beauty is a physical fact. The sight of you confuses me.” “I always told you you were morbid.” Moya's happy audacity returned. “Now, how long are you going to sit and think about that?” “Do I sit and think about things?” His reluctant, boyish smile, which all women loved, captured his features for a moment. “It is very rude of me.” “Suppose I should ask you what you are thinking about?” “Ah! I am afraid you would say 'morbid' again.” “Try me! You ought to let me know at once if you are going to break out in any new form of morbidness.” “I wish it might amuse you, but it wouldn't. Let me put you a case--seriously.” Moya smiled. “Once we were serious--ages ago. Do you remember?” “Do I remember!” “Well? You are you, and I am I, still.” “Yes; and as full of fateful surprises for each other.” “I bar 'fateful'! That word has the true taint of morbidness.” “But you can't 'bar' fate. Listen: this is a supposing, you know. Suppose that an accident had happened to our leader on the way home--to your Lieutenant Winslow, we'll say”-- “_My_ lieutenant!” “Your father's--the regiment's--Lieutenant Winslow 'of ours.' Suppose we had brought him back in a state to need a surgeon's help; and without a word to any one he should get up and walk out of the hospital with his hurts not healed, and no one knew why, or where he had gone? There would be a stir about it, would there not? And if such a poor spectre of a bridegroom as I were allowed to join the search, no one would think it strange, or call it a slight to his bride if the fellow went?” “I take your case,” said Moya with a beaming look. “You want to go after that poor man who suffered with you.” “Who went with us to save us from our own headstrong folly, and would have died there alone”-- “Yes; oh, yes!--before you begin to think about yourself, or me. Because he is nobody 'of ours,' and no one seems to feel responsible, and we go on talking and laughing just the same!” “Do they talk of this downstairs?” “To-night they were talking--oh, with such philosophy! But how came you to know it?” Paul did not answer this question. “Then”--he drew a long breath,--“then you could bear it, dear?--the comment, even if they called it a slight to you and a piece of quixotic lunacy? Others will not take my case, remember.”