out you."

"To tell the truth," he answered, "that's exactly what I've been saying
to myself. I shan't be any good. I don't see myself sticking a bayonet
into even a German. Unless he happened to be abnormally clumsy. I tried
to shoot a rabbit once. I might have done it if the little beggar,
instead of running away, hadn't turned and looked at me."

"I should keep out of it if I were you," laughed Joan.

"I can't," he answered. "I'm too great a coward."

"An odd reason for enlisting," thought Joan.

"I couldn't face it," he went on; "the way people would be looking at me
in trains and omnibuses; the things people would say of me, the things I
should imagine they were saying; what my valet would be thinking of me.
Oh, I'm ashamed enough of myself. It's the artistic temperament, I
suppose. We must always be admired, praised. We're not the stuff that
martyrs are made of. We must for ever be kow-towing to the cackling
geese around us. We're so terrified lest they should hiss us."

The street was empty. They were pacing it slowly, up and down.

"I've always been a coward," he continued. "I fell in love with you the
first day I met you on the stairs. But I dared not tell you."

"You didn't give me that impression," answered Joan.

She had always found it difficult to know when to take him seriously and
when not.

"I was so afraid you would find it out," he explained.

"You thought I would take advantage of it," she suggested.

"One can never be sure of a woman," he answered. "And it would have been
so difficult. There was a girl down in Scotland, one of the village
girls. It wasn't anything really. We had just been children together.
But they all thought I had gone away to make my fortune so as to come
back and marry her--even my mother. It would have looked so mean if
after getting on I had married a fine London lady. I could never have
gone home again."

"But you haven't married her--or have you?" asked Joan.

"No," he answered. "She wrote me a beautiful letter that I shall always
keep, begging me to forgive her, and hoping I might be happy. She had
married a young farmer, and was going out to Canada. My mother will
never allow her name to be mentioned in our house."

They had reached the end of the street again. Joan held out her hand
with a laugh.

"Thanks for the compliment," she said. "Though I notice you wait till
you're going away before telling me."

"But quite seriously,"