"You've taken me by surprise," said I. "I'm not young enough to be familiar with these sudden jerks." "You thought it was Major Boyce." "I did, Betty. True, you've said nothing about it to me for ever so long, and when I have asked you for news of him your answers have shewed me that all was not well. But you've never told me, or anyone, that the engagement was broken off." Her young face was set sternly as she looked into the fire. "It's not broken off--in the formal sense. Leonard thought fit to let it dwindle, and it has dwindled until it has perished of inanition." She flashed round. "I'm not the sort to ask any man for explanations." "Boyce went out with the first lot in August," I said. "He has had seven awful months. Mons and all the rest of it. You must excuse a man in the circumstances for not being aux petits soins des dames. And he seems to be doing magnificently--twice mentioned in dispatches." "I know all that," she said. "I'm not a fool. But the war has nothing to do with it. It started a month before the war broke out. Don't let us talk of it." She threw the end of her cigarette into the fire and lit a fresh one. I accepted the action as symbolical. I dismissed Boyce, and said:-- "And so you're engaged to Captain Connor?" "More than that," she laughed. "I'm going to marry him. He's going out next week. It's idiotic to have an engagement. So I'm going to marry him the day after to-morrow." Now here was a piece of news, all flung at my head in a couple of minutes. The day after to-morrow! I asked for the reason of this disconcerting suddenness. "He's going out next week." "My dear," said I, "I have known you for a very long time--and I suppose it's because I'm such a very old friend that you've come to tell me all about it. So I can talk to you frankly. Have you considered the terrible chances of this war? Heaven knows what may happen. He may be killed." "That's why I'm marrying him," she said. There was a little pause. For the moment I had nothing to say, as I was busily searching for her point of view. Then, with pauses between each sentence, she went on:-- "He asked me two months ago, and again a month ago. I told him to put such ideas out of his head. Yesterday he told me they were off to the front and said what a wonderful help it would be to him if he could carry away some hope of my love. So I gave it to him."--She threw back her head and looked at me, with flushed cheeks. "The love, not the hope." "I don't think it was right of him to press for an immediate marriage," said I, in a grandfatherly way--though God knows if I had been mad for a girl I should have done the same myself when I was young. "He didn't" said Betty, coolly. "It was all my doing. I fixed it up there and then. Looked up Whitaker's Almanack for the necessary information, and sent him off to get a special license." I nodded a non-committal head. It all seemed rather mad. Betty rose and from her graceful height gazed down on me.