es between
them, dared he, ask her to marry him? Tremblingly she waited for what he
had to say.

"Jane," he said, "you know that I love you. I am confident, too, that
you love me."

"I don't love you," she forced her unwilling lips to say. "I can't. When
our country is at war, when she needs men, brave men, how could any true
American girl love any man who stayed at home, who idled about the
hotels, who--"

"Girl," his voice grew suddenly stern and commanding, softening a little
as he repeated her name, "Jane, dear, let me finish. I love you. There
are grave reasons--all-important reasons--why I may not now ask you to
be my wife."

"I never could be your wife," she cried desperately, "the wife of a--"

The word died in her throat. She could not bring herself to tell him,
the man she loved, the thing she knew he was.

"My Jane," he said, wholly unheeding her impassioned protest, "you know
little yet of what life means in this great world of ours. You, here in
your parents' home, sheltered, protected, inexperienced, have not the
knowledge nor the means of judging me. You must take me on faith, on the
faith of your love for me. For a woman, life holds but two great
treasures, two loves--her husband's and her children's. With a man it is
different. Love is his, too, but there is something more, something
bigger--duty. Here in your country--"

Even in her distress she caught his phrase "here in _your_ country" and
turned ghastly white. Always before in talking with her he had spoken of
himself as an American. Did he realize, she wondered, that he had at
last betrayed himself to her? Was he about to strip the mask from
himself and his activities at last, and in the face of it all expect
her, Jane Strong, to admit that she loved him?

"Here in your country," he went on placidly, "women forced by economic
conditions have been driven from home into business, into politics, into
office-holding, even into war activities. Longing for the clinging arms
of little children they are striving to forget in assuming some part in
the affairs that belong properly to men. But to the true woman love must
ever mean more than duty, more than country. Those are words for men. A
woman, if she would find happiness, must follow her heart, must forsake
all for the man she loves. A woman's duty is only to the man she loves,
just as a man's duty is to be true to himself, to his country."

"But," she cried, "you told me you were American, th