"Nora!"
"You see!" she exclaimed with bitter triumph. "That is too much to ask from you!"
"I am a soldier," he said.
"Then I would to God I had been born to so easy a profession!"
She turned away, battling with the fierce, angry sobs that choked her. The next instant his arms were about her. There was no hope and no joy in his embrace. He held her as he might have done in the midst of shipwreck and before the approach of death.
"Do you think it is easy to put before you the choice—knowing what you will choose?" he asked.
"Knowing——?" she stammered.
"You do not love me enough to stand by me."
"That is not true!"
She freed herself and took a step back, searching his face as though to find there an answer to some agonising doubt.