arting
and flashing in the sunlight, clutched his sleeve. The fingers, that
he would rather kiss than the lips of any other woman that ever lived,
clung to his arm. Their clasp reminded him of that of a drowning child
he had once lifted from the surf.

"If you should die," whispered Miss Armitage. "What would I do. What
would I do!"

"But my dearest," cried the young man. "My dearest ONE! I've GOT to go.
It's our own war. Everybody else will go," he pleaded. "Every man you
know, and they're going to fight, too. I'm going only to look on. That's
bad enough, isn't it, without sitting at home? You should be sorry I'm
not going to fight."

"Sorry!" exclaimed the girl. "If you love me--"

"If I love you," shouted the young man. His voice suggested that he was
about to shake her. "How dare you?"

She abandoned that position and attacked from one more logical.

"But why punish me?" she protested. "Do I want the war? Do I want to
free Cuba? No! I want YOU, and if you go, you are the one who is sure
to be killed. You are so big--and so brave, and you will be rushing in
wherever the fighting is, and then--then you will die." She raised
her eyes and looked at him as though seeing him from a great distance.
"And," she added fatefully, "I will die, too, or maybe I will have to
live, to live without you for years, for many miserable years."

Fearfully, with great caution, as though in his joy in her he might
crush her in his hands, the young man drew her to him and held her
close. After a silence he whispered. "But, you know that nothing can
happen to me. Not now, that God has let me love you. He could not be so
cruel. He would not have given me such happiness to take it from me. A
man who loves you, as I love you, cannot come to any harm. And the man
YOU love is immortal, immune. He holds a charmed life. So long as you
love him, he must live."

The eyes of the girl smiled up at him through her tears. She lifted her
lips to his. "Then you will never die!" she said.

She held him away from her. "Listen!" she whispered. "What you say is
true. It must be true, because you are always right. I love you so that
nothing can harm you. My love will be a charm. It will hang around your
neck and protect you, and keep you, and bring you back to me. When you
are in danger my love will save you. For, while it lives, I live. When
it dies--"

Chesterton kissed her quickly.

"What happens then," he said, "doesn't matter."

The war gam