"Thinking of them—sending them—has been the big joy of my life," he broke in. "I've been—drunk with it. I've never felt anything like this before. Why, I'd die for you; I'd sell my soul. Even that's nothing!"
"They're very great things," she assured him gravely, as she had assured other men of different types who had flung themselves on her altar as burnt-offerings. "Any woman would feel the same. But——"
"I don't care a hang what any other woman would feel. All I care for on God's earth is you—you. Couldn't you think of me—couldn't you, if I tried to make something of myself——?"
Marise laughed a charming laugh. "Isn't it making something of yourself, to have won the Victoria Cross?" she challenged.
"Oh, that! That was an accident. I just got so mad I forgot to be scared for a minute or two, and went for a few Germans——"
"The newspapers compared you to Horatio keeping the bridge against an army."
"George! You remember that?"
"Women don't forget such things." (She would have forgotten if that clipping from the Daily Mail hadn't associated itself with Tony's onslaught upon the regimental hero. But she wasn't called upon to mention this.) "It was long before I saw you, that I read what you had done, and fixed your name in my mind," she went on. "Now I have my own special memories of you. I shall keep your gifts always. And I shall be prouder of them than ever, because they came from a hero——"
"You're breaking it to me that there's no hope," he cut in. The blood was gone from his face now. "Nothing I could do, or try to be, would make you like me well enough——"
"Oh, you are too impulsive!" she checked him. "You've seen me only twice——"