“Any old how.”  Bull’s eyes were deeply regarding.  They were very gentle.  “Here,” he went on, “fight has a clear, definite meaning for me.  I fight to win.  I’ll stop at nothing.  It’s always a game of ’rough and tough’ with me.  Gouge, chew, and all the rest of it.  Frankly, there’s a devil inside me, when it’s fight.  I want you to know this, so your scruples needn’t worry you.”

“Yes.”

Nancy’s gaze was turned seawards.

“And you sail—­to-morrow?  When do you return?” she asked a moment later.

Bull smilingly shook his head.

“We are at war,” he said.

The girl’s eyes came back.  She, too, smiled.

“I forgot.”  Then she added:  “You go by the Empress?”

“Yes.”

They had both contrived to make it difficult.  The barrier was growing.  Both realised it, and Nancy was stirred more than she knew.  She had seen this man and hurried over to him.  She had purposely denied him for two weeks, but the sight of him on the promenade had been irresistible.  Now—­now she hardly knew what to say; and yet there were a hundred things struggling in her mind to find expression.  She was paralysed by the memory of the recent interview she had had with her employers—­the great financial head of her house included—­wherein she had learned all that the coming war meant personally to herself.  She would have given worlds at that moment to have been able to blot out that memory.  But she had no power to do so.  It loomed almost tragically in its significance in the presence of this man.

Bull found it no less difficult.  He had striven to make things easy for her.  He had no second thought.  And now he realised the thing he had done.  His words had only served to fling an irrevocable challenge, and thus, finally and definitely, made the longed-for approach between them impossible.

He drew a deep breath.

“Yes.  I sail on the Empress.”

“And you are glad—­of course?”

Bull laughed.

“Some ways.”

“You mean—?”

“Why, I shouldn’t be sailing if things weren’t going my way,” he said.  Then he turned about and his movement was an invitation.  “But let’s quit it,” he said.  “Let’s forget—­for the moment.  You don’t know what this meeting has meant to me.  I wanted to see you, if only to say ‘good-bye.’  I thought I wasn’t going to.”

They moved down the promenade together.

Nancy did her best.  They talked of everything but the impending war, and the meaning of it.  But the barrier had grown out of all proportion.  And a great unease tugged at the heart of each.  At length, as they came back towards the hotel, Nancy felt it impossible to go on.  And with downright truth she said so.

“It must be ’good-bye’—­now,” she said.  “This is all unreal.  It must be so.  We’re at war.  We shall be at each other’s throats presently.  Well, I just can’t pretend.  I don’t want to think about it.  I hate to remember it.  But it’s there in my mind the whole time; and it worries so I don’t know the things I’m saying.  It’s best to say ‘good-bye’ and ‘bon voyage’ right here.  And whatever the future has for us I just mean that.”