im with a smile. "A
chance remark by Billy Travers, if you want to know. And then I asked
a few questions, and put two and two together. It seemed a deliberate
slight to me. It seemed so sordid. You see I didn't understand--then."

"And now? Do you understand now?" He leaned towards her eagerly.

"Should I have said to you what I have if I didn't?" She held out her
hand to him, and with a quick movement he put it to his lips. "I've
grown, you see . . . got a little nearer the true value of things.
I've passed out of the promiscuous kissing stage, as I told you. . . .
And I think I realise rather more than I did what men are. . . . One
doesn't make them up out of books now. All this has taught one to
understand a man's temptations--to forgive him when he fails." Then a
little irrelevantly--"They seem so petty, don't they--now?"

Vane gently dropped the hand he was holding, and his face as he looked
at her was inscrutable. Into his mind there had flashed Lear's
question: "And goes thy _heart_ with this?" Then irritably he banished
it. . . . God bless her! She was all heart: of course she was.

"Will you tell me where exactly you have arrived at?" he asked quietly.

"At the certainty that there lies in front of you and me work to be
done. I don't know what that work will prove to be--but, Derek, we've
got to find out. It may be that we shall do it together. It may be
that my work is just to be with you. And it may be that it isn't that
you won't want me. Ah! yes, dear," as he made a quick, impatient
movement. "There is always the possibility. I want you to go and find
out, Derek, and I want you to make sure that you really want me--that
it isn't just six months in Flanders. Also," she added after a pause,
"I want to be quite sure about myself." For a while Vane stared out to
sea in silence.

"Supposing," he said slowly, "the work in front of me is back to
Flanders again, as it probably will be. And supposing I'm not so lucky
next time. What then?"

She turned and faced him. "Why then, dear, Fate will have decided for
us, won't she?"

"A deuced unsatisfactory decision," grumbled Vane. "Margaret, I don't
want to worry you; I don't want to force myself on you . . . but won't
you give me some sort of a promise?"

She shook her head. "I'll give you no promise at all, Derek. You've
got to find yourself, and I've got to find myself; and when we've both
done that we shall know how we stand