"Yes, I'll go back. I don't think I'd care to live in England again. It's jolly out there--always summer. You'd like it. Say you'll like it--the jolly warmth and the brightness. The scenery knocks spots out of Wortheton. Do you remember that day in the woods, Prudence?--and the primroses we gathered and threw away? I've often thought of that day, when I've been lonely and wanting you, and comparing the blue of your eyes with the blue of the African sky. Dear, waking and dreaming, I have pictured you continually--leaning out of a window with the roses beneath the sill." He bent lower over her and clasped her closely, smiling at the reluctance, which he realised, and attributed to shyness; it was not because she did not love him that she shrank from his embrace. "Little girl," he said, "dear little girl, I didn't come over only to fight for the old country, I came for the purpose of fetching you and taking you out with me, if I am spared. You'll go with me, Prudence--as my wife? You know how I love you." "Oh!" she said. And suddenly she was clinging to him sobbing, with her face hidden against his sleeve. "I can't. I can't." He was surprised, but manifestly unconvinced. He supposed it was family opposition she feared, and he set himself to the business of sweeping this difficulty aside. "We're up against a lot, of course," he said, and smoothed her hair with his ungloved hand. "Who cares? If I go back to Africa I'm going to take you with me, if all the blooming family rolls up to prevent me. You trust me? You love me, Prudence dear?" Prudence lifted her head, and sat back, looking at him with drenched, dismayed blue eyes. The realisation that she must tell him of her marriage, that she ought to have told him sooner, came to her with startling abruptness. A distressful certainty that she was about to give pain to this man whom she loved better than any one in all the world gripped her tormentingly. She felt ashamed at the confession which she must make. Horror of her marriage seized her. She wanted to hide her eyes from the tenderness in his. "You don't understand," she said, and clenched her hands on the chair arm, her face strained and weary and her eyes full of a humiliated appeal. "It's not the family. Their attitude wouldn't matter. If I had only known! I thought you had forgotten, and I was so unhappy at home." Her head drooped suddenly; she hid her eyes from his gaze. "I can't tell you," she faltered. "I can't tell you." He seized her hands almost roughly and held them in a grip which hurt. His face, set and stern and paler than her own, seemed suddenly to have aged. His voice was hoarse. "You aren't going to tell me that you are married?" he said. "For God's sake, don't tell me that!" Prudence did not answer, did not raise her head; she dared not meet his eyes. He loosened her hands abruptly and stood up. "Some one's got before me," he said in odd constrained tones. "Is that it?"