"She's the secretary of the hotel." Max hesitated an instant, then, realizing from the words he had overheard how conspicuous a character Josephine Delatour evidently was, he thought best to tell Sanda something more of his story than he had told her yet. He sketched the version, vindicating his foster-mother, which he had given to Billie Brookton and the Reeveses—a version which all the world at home would, he believed, soon hear.
"So that is it?" said Sanda. "You're giving up everything to this girl. Do you think she will take it?"
"I wish I were as sure of what I shall do next as I am sure of that," laughed Max. If there had ever been any doubt in his mind as to Josephine's attitude, it had vanished while listening to the talk of her in the train.
"I know what you ought to do next," Sanda said. "You ought to be what you have been—a soldier."
"I shall always be, at heart, I think," Max confessed. "But soldier life is over for me, so far as I can see ahead."
"I wonder——" she began eagerly, then stopped abruptly.
"You wonder—what?"
"I daren't say it."
"Please dare."
"I mustn't. It would be wrong. I might be horribly sorry afterward. And yet——"