At which she withdrew from him frowning.

"No! I'm not a bit like those girls," she proclaimed. "I merely tell you
YOU CAN'T GO! My gracious!" she cried, helplessly. She knew the words
fell short of expressing her distress, but her education had not
supplied her with exclamations of greater violence.

"My goodness!" she cried. "How can you frighten me so? It's not like
you," she reproached him. "You are so unselfish, so noble. You are
always thinking of other people. How can you talk of going to war--to be
killed--to me? And now, now that you have made me love you so?"

The hands, that when she talked seemed to him like swallows darting
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