say it. May I, then?"

It had seemed to Jeremy's Janie that the voice in which she answered
him came from a great distance, but she never took her eyes from the
grave and vivid face.

"Yes. And quickly, please."

So he had told her--quickly--in his exquisitely careful English, and
she had listened as attentively and politely, huddled up on the
brick steps in the sunlight, as though he were running over the
details of the last drive, instead of tearing her life to pieces
with every word. She remembered now that it hadn't seemed real at
all--if it had been to Jerry that these horrors had happened could
she have sat there so quietly, feeling the colour bright in her
cheeks, and the wind stirring in her hair, and the sunlight warm on
her hands? Why, for less than this people screamed, and fainted, and
went raving mad!

"You say--that his back is broken?"

"But yes, my dear," Liane's Philippe had told her, and she had seen
the tears shining in his gray eyes.

"And he is badly burned?"

"My brave Janie, these questions are not good to ask--not good, not
good to answer. This I will tell you. He lives, our Jerry--and so
dearly does he love you that he will drag back that poor body from
hell itself--because it is yours, not his. This he has sent me to