She leaned forward impulsively and laid a hand on his knee.
“No. You’re acting strangely, but I know that there’s a reason for it. As for your being a coward”—she laughed softly—“it’s impossible—quite impossible to make me believe that.”
He laid his fingers over hers for a moment.
“Nice of you to have confidence in a chap and all that, but appearances are against me—that’s the difficulty.”
“Why are they against you? Why should they be against you? Because you—” She stopped, for here she felt that she was approaching dangerous ground. Instead of parleying longer, she used her woman’s weapons frankly and leaning toward him put an arm around his neck and compelled him to turn his face to hers. “Oh, Cyril, won’t you tell me what this mystery is that is coming between us? Won’t you let me help you? I want to be in the sunlight with you again. It can’t go on this way, one of us in the dark and the other in the light. I have felt it for weeks. When I spoke to you tonight about going to France it was in the hope that you might give me some explanation that would satisfy me. My heart is wrapped up in the cause of England, but if the German blood in you is calling you away from your duties as an Englishman, tell me frankly and I will try to forgive you, but don’t let the shadow stay over us any longer, Cyril. I must know the truth. What is the mystery that hangs over you and makes——”
“Mystery?” he put in quickly. “You’re a bit seedy, Doris. Thinkin’ too much about the war. Nothin’ mysterious about me.” He turned his head away from her again. “People don’t like my sittin’ tight—here in England,” he said more slowly, “when all the chaps I know are off to the front. I—I can’t help it. That’s all.”
“But it’s so unlike you,” she pleaded. “It’s the sporting thing, Cyril.”
“I want you to believe,” he put in slowly, “it isn’t the kind of sport I care for.”
“I won’t believe it. I can’t. I know you better than that.”
“That’s the trouble,” he insisted. “I’m afraid you don’t know me at all.”