vanion? Oh, Nancy!"

"As though a girl must care for six feet of flesh without brains
because she isn't a blue-stocking. Why--why--couldn't you see, Bob?"

"And I say--oh, Nancy, does this mean that you care for me--love me?"

"I'm afraid I do," she half-laughed, half-sobbed.

"Afraid?"

"Yes, don't you see? You are not in the least like the man I wanted to
love. You could have won your blue as a cricketer, but you wouldn't
take the trouble to get it. A man in Oxford told me that you could be
the best three-quarter in the 'Varsity Rugby team, but that you were
too lazy to play. You've been a sort of negative creature, while I
love a man of action. What are old shrivelled manuscripts worth to the
world to-day? Who cares about the sayings of some old dead and
forgotten German, or some obscure passages in _Bede's Ecclesiastical
History_, when there's a great surging life all around us to-day?
History is only a record of what took place in the past; I love the
thought of a man who wants to make history, who sets his ideas to
action. And you, Bob, you have told me again and again that you want
to spend your life in historical research, or some such useless thing."

"But--but, Nancy, what does all that matter when I love you--love you
with all my life? Besides----"

"I come of a race of fighters," cried the girl. "When Philip of Spain
sent over his Great Armada, to rob us of our liberty, one of my
ancestors fought the Dons. He gave ships and men to our country, and
helped to save us from oppression. When Napoleon cast a shadow over
Europe, and threatened to destroy our country, men of my name were
among the foremost in fighting him. My grandfather represented St. Ia
in Parliament, and he roused the country. While you--oh, Bob, forgive
me, but your ideal seems to be to sit in a library in Oxford, wearing a
dirty old dressing-gown and iron-rimmed spectacles, reading or writing
books which will be of no use to any one! Is that a life for a man?"

"But if his mind is cast in that mould?"

"I haven't finished yet," went on the girl. "Forgive me, Bob, for
talking so much. I wouldn't only--oh, Bob, can't you see? Why, at our
last dance--when--when I had kept four for you, you never even asked
for them. And I--I wanted to dance them too; but--but I had to sit
them out, and when other men begged me to let them put their names down
on my card, I said I was tired. Then, when I heard afterwards that you
had