“Do you, indeed?” he walked nearer, boyishly happy because she was close beside him. He wanted to touch her, to take her hand and walk as children do, but could not because of the subtile barrier he felt between them. He determined to break it down. “Finish what you were saying? And then it was me — what?”

“And then it was I who gave out, not you.”

“But you were a heroine — a heroine from the ground up, and I love you.” He spoke with such boyish impulsiveness that she took the remark as one of his extravagances, and merely smiled indulgently, as if amused at it. She did not even flush, but accepted it as she would an outburst from Hoyle.

David was amazed. It only served to show him how