"Joan," he whispered. She was all desirable with her little fluttered breath, her eyes that fell from his, her soft, warm hand. "Joan!" Joan lifted shut eyes and trembling lips to his; she made no protest as he drew her into his arms, his kiss lifted her for the time being into a heaven of great content. So they clung together for a breathing-space, then Joan woke out of her dream and shuddered away from him, hiding her face in her hands. "Oh, don't," she begged, "please, please don't!" Her words, the very piteousness of her appeal, remembering all her circumstances, hurt Dick. "My dear," he said, "don't you understand; have I made you afraid? I love you; I have always loved you. I was going to have waited to ask you to marry me until next week when I came to you in town. But to-night, because I love you, because you are going away to-morrow, I couldn't keep sensible any longer. And anyway, Joan, what does it matter?--to-day or to-morrow, the question will always be the same. I love you, will you marry me, dear? No, wait." He saw her movement to answer. "I don't really want you to say anything now, I would rather wait till we meet in town next week. You are not angry with me, are you, Joan? You are not afraid of my love?" But Joan could make no answer, only she turned from him and ran up the steps; the bunch of violets lay where she had dropped them when he caught her hands, but neither of them noticed it. He saw her face for a second against the lighted hall and a little to his dismay he could see that she was crying. Then she had gone and the door shut to behind her quickly. Dick waited about for a little, but she made no sign, and finally he turned rather disconsolately away. One thought, however, was left to comfort him through the night, the memory of her soft, yielding hands, the glad surrender of her lips. CHAPTER XXIV "Ah, sweet, and we too, can we bring One sigh back, bid one smile revive? Can God restore one ruined thing, Or he who slays our souls alive Make dead things thrive?" A. C. SWINBURNE. Early morning brought Joan a letter from Dick. She had hardly slept all night. Once she had got up, determined to write him; the truth would look more cold and formal in a letter, but her courage had failed her, and instead she had sat crouched over the table, her body shaken with a storm of tears. Then Fanny had come in, an after-supper Fanny, noisy and sentimental, and she had had to be helped to bed, coughing and explaining that "life was good if you only knew how to live it." Joan had crept back to her own bed once the other girl had fallen asleep, and she had lain with wide eyes watching the night turn from blackness to soft grey, from grey to clear, bright yellow. There were dark shadows round her eyes in the morning, and her face was white and strained-looking. "DEAR HEART," Dick had written: