“Poor little devil!” he said on the last day in the smoking room, “he’s going to a bad time, all right.  I was in Africa for eight years.  Boer war and the rest of it.  Got run through the thigh in a native uprising, and they won’t have me now.  But Africa was cheery to this war.”

He asked the boy into the smoking room, which he had hitherto avoided.  He had some queer idea that he did not care to take his uniform in there.  Absurd, of course.  It made him rather lonely in the hours Edith spent in her cabin, preparing variations of costume for the evening out of her small trunk.  But he was all man, and he liked the society of men; so he went at last, with Lethway, and ordered vichy!

He had not allowed himself to think much beyond the end of the voyage.  As the ship advanced, war seemed to slip beyond the edge of his horizon.  Even at night, as he lay and tossed, his thoughts were either of the next day, when he would see Edith again, or of that indefinite future when he would return, covered with honors, and go to her, wherever she was.

He never doubted the honors now.  He had something to fight for.  The medals in their cases looked paltry to him, compared with what was coming.  In his sleep he dreamed of the V.C., dreams he was too modest to put into thoughts in waking hours.

Then they reached the Mersey.  On the last evening of the voyage he and Edith stood on the upper deck.  It was a zone of danger.  From each side of the narrowing river flashlights skimmed the surface of the water, playing round but never on the darkened ship.  Red and green lights blinked signals.  Their progress was a devious one through the mine-strewn channel.  There was a heavy sea even there, and the small lights on the mast on the pilot boat, as it came to a stop, described great arcs that seemed, first to starboard, then to port, to touch the very tips of the waves.

“I’m not crazy about this,” the girl said, as the wind tugged at her skirts.  “It frightens me.  Brings the war pretty close, doesn’t it?”

Emotion swelled his heart and made him husky—­love and patriotism, pride and hope, and a hot burst of courage.

“What if we strike a mine?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t care so much.  It would give me a chance to save you.”

Overhead they were signalling the shore with a white light.  Along with the new emotions that were choking him came an unaccustomed impulse of boastfulness.

“I can read that,” he said when she ignored his offer to save her.  “Of course it’s code, but I can spell it out.”

He made a move to step forward and watch the signaler, but she put her hand on his arm.

“Don’t go.  I’m nervous, Cecil,” she said.

She had called him by his first name.  It shook him profoundly, that and the touch of her hand on his arm.

“Oh, I love you, love you!” he said hoarsely.  But he did not try to take her in his arms, or attempt to caress the hand that still clung to him.  He stood very erect, looking at the shadowy outline of her.  Then, her long scarf blowing toward him, he took the end of it and kissed that very gravely.