His eye evaded hers. "I am seriously questioning whether you ought to make
this change. All your friends are here."

"Oh, as to that! There might be advantages in working among strangers. Mrs.
Grey fairly puts herself out to let me understand that she is a friend in
need!" She reined herself up, recollecting, but too late. "Oh, Guy, don't
mind so for me. Why, the South is full of women doing what I am, only so
many of them are doing it--without--the Guys who never came back!"

"Lucky dogs!" subterraneously. Then, seeing her apprehensive of a second
flare-up of that volcanic fire: "So gentlemanly of them, too, Bibi. How can
those few years of love be worth a life of this to you?"

"Those few years? why, Guy! of love? Is that how _you_ feel?" Her eyes
filled; her whole face quivered. "Oh, Guy--be willing for my sake. I never
knew what love could mean until lately."

His grasp hurt her knuckles. "Yes, dear, I have seen. It's very sweet. It's
the mother in you, Bibi, and my helplessness. Of course! What could a woman
_love_ in a dependent, half-corpse of a no-man?"

For a moment she was too surprised to speak. She stared at him. "What a
notion! and it isn't true! You never were any more a man than you've been
through these two dreadful years." She sounded fairly indignant. "And for
my part, I never appreciated what you were half as much."

"Love doesn't begin with a _P_," he remarked to the opposite wall.

"But what do you suppose the _purpose_ was?"