"It is true," said Tony, "I might have written. But would you have believed me if I had? No." "Then you might have come to me," she urged. "Once--just for five minutes--to tell me what you meant to do." "I might," Tony agreed; "in fact, I very nearly did. I was under the windows of the house in Berkeley Square one night." And Millie started. "Yes, you were," she said slowly. "You knew that?" "Yes; I knew it the next day." And she added, "I wish now, I think, that you had come in that night." "Suppose that I had," said Tony; "suppose that I had told you of my fine plan, you would have had no faith in it. You would merely have thought, 'Here's another folly to be added to the rest.' Your contempt would have been increased, that's all." It was quite strange to Millie Stretton that there ever could have been a time when she had despised him. She saw him sitting now in front of her, quiet and stern; she remembered her own terror when he burst into the room, when he flung Callon headlong through the windows, when he turned at last towards her. "We have been strangers to one another." "Yes," he replied; "I did not know you. I should never have left you--now I understand that. I trusted you very blindly, but I did not know you." Millie lowered her eyes from his face. "Nor I you," she answered. "What did you do when you went away that night from Berkeley Square?" "I enlisted in the Foreign Legion in Algeria." Millie raised her head again with a start of surprise. "Soldiering was my trade, you see. It was the one profession where I had just a little of that expert knowledge which is necessary nowadays if you are to make your living." Something of his life in the Foreign Legion Tony now told her. He spoke deliberately, since a light was beginning dimly to shine through the darkness of his perplexities. Of a set purpose he described to her the arduous perils of active service and the monotony of the cantonments. He was resolved that she should understand in the spirit and in the letter the life which for her sake he had led. He related his expedition to the Figuig oasis, his march into the Sahara under Tavernay. He took from his pocket the medals which he had won, and laid them upon the tablecloth before her. "Look at them," he said; "I earned them. These are mine. I earned them for you; and while I was earning them what were you doing?"