Red blood poured up to the man's brown face. The pressure relaxed, but he did not let her hands go. He lifted them to his lips and kissed first one, then the other. His mouth was hot as a coal just dropped from the fire!... That was her quick impression. She was not shocked, for her hands had been kissed a hundred times by sad, mad men--though not men like this. She said "Oh!" however, and gazed at him reproachfully, as "Dolores" gazed at the villain in "The Song." The effect upon Garth was the same as if she had been sincerely offended. He let her hands fall, and stammered "Forgive me!" Marise was beginning to enjoy herself a little, on the whole. Of course the man was common and rough. What was it that Tony had called his despised brother officer? A "temporary gentleman!" Yes, that was it! And a "momentary gentleman" would be even more appropriate, she thought, because at an instant of deep emotion all decent men were raised to the heights of Nature's gentility. This fellow was as fine as any nobleman, for these few seconds of time, she realised, and it was worship of her which added the new decoration to his V.C.! Despite her disappointment, she felt that romance was not utterly lacking in the situation. "There's nothing to forgive," were the obvious words her lips spoke: but the language of such eyes as hers could never be obvious. The soul of John Garth drowned in their blue depths. As dying men lose all care for conventions, so did he lose it while thus he drowned. "I love you--I love you!" he faltered. "You know, don't you? From the first--from the first look!" "Oh no, I don't know that," Marise soothed him. "But you've been so kind. Those wonderful presents! You ought not----" "Thinking of them--sending them--has been the big joy of my life," he broke in. "I've been--drunk with it. I've never felt anything like this before. Why, I'd die for you; I'd sell my soul. Even that's nothing!" "They're very great things," she assured him gravely, as she had assured other men of different types who had flung themselves on her altar as burnt-offerings. "Any woman would feel the same. But----" "I don't care a hang what any other woman would feel. All I care for on God's earth is you--you. Couldn't you think of me--couldn't you, if I tried to make something of myself----?" Marise laughed a charming laugh. "Isn't it making something of yourself, to have won the Victoria Cross?" she challenged. "Oh, that! That was an accident. I just got so mad I forgot to be scared for a minute or two, and went for a few Germans----" "The newspapers compared you to Horatio keeping the bridge against an army." "George! You remember that?"