rutal
personality drawn her with such terrible power? Was such a force love?
It was something different from the tender charm which enveloped the
slender straight young figure by her side now. She felt this with
increasing certainty.

Ned took her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers.

The touch of his lips sent a thrill through her heart. It was sweet to
be worshipped in this old-fashioned, foolish way. Whatever her own
feeling's might be, this was love--in its divinest flowering. It drew
her to-night with all but resistless tug.

"May I break the silence now, dearest, to ask you something?" he said
softly.

"Yes."

"Haven't you realized yet that you are going to be mine?"

"Not in the way you mean----"

"But you are, dearest, you are!" he whispered rapturously. "You love me.
You just haven't really faced the thing yet and put it to the test in
your heart. War has separated us, that's all. But there's never been a
moment's doubt in my soul since I looked into your eyes that night in
the old prison. Their light made the cell shine with the glory of
heaven! And when you kissed me, dearest----"

"You know why I did that, Ned," she murmured.

"You're fooling yourself, darling! You couldn't have done what you did,
if you hadn't loved me. It came to me in a flash as I held you in my
arms and pressed you to my heart. There can be no other woman on earth
for me after that moment. I lived a life time with it. Say you'll be
mine, dearest?"

"But I don't love you, Ned, as you love me----"

"I don't ask it now. I can wait. The revelation will come to you at last
in the fullness of time--promise me, dearest--promise me!"

For an hour he poured into her ears his passionate tender plea, until
the rapture of his love, the perfumed air of the spring night, and the
shimmer of moonlit waters stole into her lonely heart with resistless
charm.

She lifted her lips to his at last and whispered:

"Yes."

CHAPTER XXIX

THE PANIC

The morning after Betty returned to Carver Hospital from the front, a
mother was pouring out her heart in a burst of patriotic joy over a
wounded boy.

She thought of the lonely figure in the White House treading the wine
press of a Nation's sorrow alone and asked the mother to go with her to
the President, meet him and repeat what she had said. She consented at
once.

For the first time Betty failed to gain admission promptly. Mr.
Stoddard, his third Secretary, was at the door.