“When I do”—her voice softened incredibly—“I will let you know. And—in a way—it isn’t true when I say that I don’t believe in prayer, because—I could so easily, this very minute—pray to—you.”
“To me!” he repeated unsteadily and incredulously. “For what?”
“For what—you think—you mustn’t give me. Yet—since we are going so far away from each other—so soon—and—since—the kind of chaplain you will be is just as likely to get—a bullet through his splendid heart as any other man—I almost think—you might give it to me. It is——” He had to bend to catch the words, the heart she had mentioned beating like mad in his breast with what might almost have been a bullet through it, for the shock of it. “It is—so little for you to give—and so much—for me—to have! And I know—with your dreadful Scotch ideas of what mustn’t be, you will never, never think you can give it to me unless I—pray for it——”
He was still as a statue, except for his difficult breathing, while she waited, her head down and turned away, a wonderful deep flush overspreading all her cheek and neck. Then, at last, he spoke, in a whisper:
“It isn’t ‘little for me to give.’ It’s—all I have.—I didn’t think—didn’t dream—I could give it to you unless I gave you—myself with it. But——”
She looked up then. Her lips were smiling a little, and her eyes were full of tears—it was a glorious face she showed him.
“I always knew the Scotch were cautious,” she breathed, “and sometimes a trifle—close. But I didn’t think they would hesitate so over a ‘bit gift’—when—they were withholding—so much——”
She hadn’t finished the words before his lips met hers. And when this had happened, it was she who got swiftly to her feet. He rose also, but more slowly, and with a strange film across his eyes.
“Now,” she said, breathing a little quickly, but with the old control coming back long before he could get hold of his, “we’re quite all right, I think. We’re on a firm basis of friendship for the rest of our days, and everything completely understood. It goes without saying that this was—something to remember, and only that. Shall we——”
But Robert Black reached out and caught her hand.