"We have been strangers to one another."
"Yes," he replied; "I did not know you. I should never have left you--now I understand that. I trusted you very blindly, but I did not know you."
Millie lowered her eyes from his face.
"Nor I you," she answered. "What did you do when you went away that night from Berkeley Square?"
"I enlisted in the Foreign Legion in Algeria."
Millie raised her head again with a start of surprise.
"Soldiering was my trade, you see. It was the one profession where I had just a little of that expert knowledge which is necessary nowadays if you are to make your living."
Something of his life in the Foreign Legion Tony now told her. He spoke deliberately, since a light was beginning dimly to shine through the darkness of his perplexities. Of a set purpose he described to her the arduous perils of active service and the monotony of the cantonments. He was resolved that she should understand in the spirit and in the letter the life which for her sake he had led. He related his expedition to the Figuig oasis, his march into the Sahara under Tavernay. He took from his pocket the medals which he had won, and laid them upon the tablecloth before her.
"Look at them," he said; "I earned them. These are mine. I earned them for you; and while I was earning them what were you doing?"
Millie listened and looked. Wonder grew upon her. It was for her that he had laboured and endured and succeeded! His story was a revelation to her. Never had she dreamed that a man would so strive for any woman. She had lived so long among the little things of the world--the little emotions, the little passions, the little jealousies and rivalries, the little aims, the little methods of attaining them, that only with great difficulty could she realise a simpler and a wider life. She was overwhelmed now. Pride and humiliation fought within her--pride that Tony had so striven for her in silence and obscurity, humiliation because she had fallen so short of his example. It was her way to feel in superlatives at any crisis of her destiny, but surely she had a justification now.