self was a listening
Ear, while he told--as a man hypnotized might tell the hypnotizer--the
tale of his acquaintance with Joyce Arnold.

I'd already learned from his letter and from words she had let drop that
Joyce had nursed him in a hospital in France, when she was "doing her
bit" as a V. A. D. But she had been silent about the life-saving
episode, which had won for her a decoration and Robert Lorillard's deep
admiration and gratitude.

It seemed that during an air raid, when German machines were bombing the
hospital, Joyce had in her ward three officers just operated upon, and
too weak to walk. A bomb fell and killed one of these as Joyce and
another nurse were about to move his cot into the next ward. Then, in a
sudden horror of darkness and noise of destroying aeroplanes, she had
carried Robert in her arms to a place of comparative safety. After that
she had returned to her own ward and got the other man who lay in his
cot, though her fellow nurse had been struck down, wounded or dead.

"How she did it I've never known, or she either," said Lorillard,
dreaming back into the past. "She's tall and strong, of course, and at
that time I was reduced to a living skeleton. Still, even in my bones
I'm a good deal bigger than she is. The weight must have been enough to
crush her, yet she carried me from one ward to another, in the dark,
when the light had been struck out. And the wound in my side never bled
a drop. It was like a miracle."

"'Spect she loved you lots already, without quite knowing it," I told
him. "There've been miracles going on in the world ever since Christ,
and they always will go on, because love works them, and _only_ love. At
least, that's _my_ idea! And I don't believe God would have let Joyce
work that one, the way she did, if He hadn't meant her love to wake love
in you."

"If I could think so," said Robert, "it would make all the difference;
for I've been fighting my own heart with the whole strength of my soul,
and it's been a hard struggle. I felt it would be such a hideous
treachery to June--my beautiful June, who gave herself to me as a
goddess might to a mortal!--the meanest ingratitude to let another woman
take her place when her back is turned--even such a splendid woman as
Joyce Arnold."

"I know just how you feel," I humoured him. "You remember, I was with
June when she threw herself into your arms and offered to marry you. You
were in love with her, and you'd never dreamed till