a faint for hours and once they gave you up
for dead; then you thought enough of Uncle Peter and all of us to get
that telegram sent so we wouldn't be terrified to death and then at the
risk of your life you met us at the station and have been in bed ever
since, and yet I am to sit still and not say a word!" It was all she
could do to control herself. "I do feel grateful to you and I always
shall feel grateful to you as long as I live. And now will you take my
hand and tell me you are sorry, and let me say it all over again, and
with my whole heart? for that's the way I mean it."

She was facing him now, her hand held out, her head thrown back, her
dark eyes flashing, her bosom heaving. Slowly and reverently, as a
devotee would kiss the robe of a passing priest, Jack bent his head and
touched her fingers with his lips.

Then, raising his eyes to hers, he asked, "And is that all, Miss
Ruth? Isn't there something more?" Not once had she mentioned his
own safety--not once had she been glad over him--"Something more?" he
repeated, an ineffable tenderness in his tones--"something--it isn't
all, is it?"

"Why, how can I say anything more?" she murmured in a lowered voice,
withdrawing her hand as the sound of a step in the hall reached her ear.

The door swung wide: "Well, what are you two young people quarrelling
about?" came a soft, purring voice.

"We weren't quarrelling, Aunty. Mr. Breen is so modest he doesn't want
anybody to thank him, and I just would."

Miss Felicia felt that she had entered just in time. Scarred and
penniless heroes fresh from battle-fields of glory and desirable young
women whose fathers have been carried bodily out of burning death pits
must never be left too long together.

CHAPTER XVIII

As the weeks rolled by, two questions constantly rose in Ruth's mind:
Why had he not wanted her to thank him?--and what had he meant by--"And
is that all?"

Her other admirers--and there had been many in her Maryland home--had
never behaved like this. Was it because they liked her better than
she liked them? The fact was--and she might as well admit it once for
all--that Jack did not like her at all, he really DISliked her, and only
his loyalty to her father and that inborn courtesy which made him polite
to every woman he met--young or old--prevented his betraying himself.
She tried to suggest something like this to Miss Felicia, but that good
woman had only said: "Men are queer, my dear, and th