I--I've just come back from France," she added, making a lame attempt
to speak conventionally.

It was an effort to hold out her hand, and, when his closed around it,
she felt her whole body thrill at his touch, just as it had been wont to
thrill in those few, short, golden days when their mutual happiness had
been undarkened by any shadow from the past. Swiftly, as though all at
once afraid, she snatched her hand from his clasp.

"What have you been doing in France?" he asked.

"Nursing," she answered briefly. "Did you think I could stay here and
do--nothing, at such a time as this?"

There was accusation in her tone, but if he felt that her speech
reflected in any way upon himself, he showed no sign of it. His eyes
were roving over her, marking the changes wrought in the year that had
passed since they had met--the sharpened contour of her face, the too
slender body, the white fragility of the bare hand which grasped the
handle of the basket she was carrying.

"You are looking very ill," he said, at last, abruptly.

"I'm not ill," she replied indifferently. "Only a bit over-tired. As
soon as I have had a thorough rest I am going back to France."

"You won't go back there again?" he exclaimed sharply. "You're not fit
for such work!"

"Certainly I shall go back--as soon as ever Dr. Selwyn will let me. It's
little enough to do for the men who are giving--everything!" Suddenly,
the pent-up indignation within her broke bounds. "Garth, how can you
stay here when men are fighting, dying--out there?" Her voice vibrated
with the sense of personal shame which his apathy inspired in her.
"Oh!"--as though she feared he might wound her yet further by advancing
the obvious excuse--"I know you're past military age. But other
men--older men than you--have gone. I know a man of fifty who bluffed
and got in! There are heaps of back doors into the Army these days."

"And there's a back door out of it--the one through which I was kicked
out!" he retorted, his mouth setting itself in the familiar bitter
lines.

The scoffing defiance of his attitude baffled her.

"Don't you want to help your country?" she pleaded. It was horrible to
her that he should stand aside--inexplicable except in terms of that
wretched business on the Indian Frontier, in the hideous truth of which
only his own acknowledgment had compelled her to believe.

He looked at her with hard, indifferent eyes.

"My country made me an outcast," he replied. "I'll