"Look here, d'you think you could care enough to be _mine_?" he heard himself say. "Bai Jove, if you would----! If you'd marry _me_! Would you? Would you?" There! He'd done it again. Now came the agonizing moment. Now again he'd have to wait for the girl's answer. That always seemed to him to be at least two hours in coming: except once, an anguished once when the girl had said, "Yes" directly. What would this one say; what? He waited in the dark; and sweat broke out on the young brow under the peaked cap. In a long, uncertain breath the girl said, "Oh----" Then, "D'you mean it, Mr. Ellerton?" "Of _course_!" returned Mr. Ellerton, ardently, but digging his nails into the palms of his hands. The soft voice beside him said, rather waveringly, "Wait a minute----" The young man who had just proposed again set his teeth and waited. This was Hades. Serve him right for being such a double-blanked fool again! But this was the worst yet. Never before had he not been able to see the girl's face when he asked her to marry him. Never again, he vowed incoherently to himself, never again would he be such an ass as to propose to a girl during a raid with all the lights out! But then, never again would he let himself in for this with any girl alive! Not if he got safely out of this! Oh, Lord, the fool he'd been!... Could he possibly light a cigarette?... No, only wait.... "A minute" this little thing had said.... Before she spoke again, æons seemed to elapse. Actually they were a few moments only, during which the mind of Olwen Howel-Jones dashed swiftly through four distinct phases of thought. The first was pure surprise. The second was a "No" that came from the bed-rock of woman's nature, that fundamental thing which Convention must blast and quarry into acceptable shapes.