"No, it hasn't, Mr. Blair. I was asking you in cold blood if you would not stay in England and marry me, and use my money from here for the furtherance of the cause out there." He stared at her still with all his great heart in his eyes--all of it that was not jumping in his throat like a baby rabbit. He gazed down at her for another moment, then bent suddenly before her and took her hand and kissed it, and said huskily and in jerks--between the rabbit-kicks-- "You will think no ill of me--if I go--at once. I dare not stop----" But she had gripped his hand and held it tight, and stood holding him, and her face shone and her eyes. "Then--will you take me with you, Kenneth?" "Take you with me?" Her rings cut into her next fingers under the fierceness of his sudden grip, and she could have sung aloud, for the grip came right from his heart and told his tale to her. "Do you mean it--Jean?" "Surely." And yet he had a doubt. You must bear with him. You see, he had been half inside the gates of death, and--well, the proceeding _was_ distinctly out of the common run of things. "Is it myself--or the work?" he asked almost fiercely. For the thought had flashed across him--and not unnaturally--that this was but one more result of the excitement of the meeting last night. She had been shaken out of her usual discretion and decorum, had probably lain awake all night, and---- But her eyes were steady as stars, and as bright, as she said-- "Both! But yourself first. I liked you the first time we met. I loved you the second. I have never ceased to think about you. Your going away left a blank in my life. After last night I love and trust you more than ever, if that be possible. Last night my way was made clear to me." "Now, glory be to God!" he cried, and kissed the wistful lips that looked as if they had been waiting long for just that seal to the compact. And then he sat down suddenly and covered his face with his hands, as though what was in him was not even for her eyes. She sank down on to a footstool beside his chair, and noticed how white his hand was compared with the great, strong brown hand which had held hers that day in the Greenock church. He was himself again in a moment--or suppose we say he came back from where he had been--and his face was full of the old radiant glow as he raised it to look at her. "It _is_ real, isn't it?" he asked in a light-hearted, boyish way. "I'm real," she said, smiling back at him. "You seem not quite yourself." "Did you ever try to imagine what it would feel like to have every single desire of your heart suddenly granted to you all in a lump?" "I don't think I ever did. It sounds as if it might be too much for one." "It is--almost. And you wonder if it is real and true, or only a vain imagining. Jean, is it true that you care for me?" "No--love you, Ken,--dearly--every inch of you." "And that you are going to marry me?" "If you ask me properly."