"Can I see you a few minutes before leaving to-night?
"John Vaughan."
He sent it and began hurriedly to dress, his mind in a whirl of nervous excitement. His vanity had not even paused to ask whether her answer would be yes. He was sure of it. The big exciting thing was that he had made a thrilling discovery in the midst of that insane panic. He was in love—for the first time in life foolishly and madly in love. Fighting and elbowing his way through that throng of desperate terror-stricken men and horses it had come to him in a flash that life was sweet and precious because Betty Winter was in it. The more he thought of it the more desperate became his determination not to be killed until he could see and tell her. Through every moment of his wild scramble through woods and fields and crowded road, up that tree and down again, his heart was beating her name:
"Betty—Betty—Betty!"
What a blind fool he had been not to see it before! She, too, had been blind. It was all clear now—this mysterious power that had called them from the first, neither of them knowing or understanding.
When Betty took his note from the maid's hand her eyes could see nothing for a moment. She turned away that Peggy should not catch her white face. She knew instinctively the message was from John Vaughan. It may have been written with his last breath and sent by a friend. She broke the seal with slow, nervous dread, looked quickly, and laughed aloud when she had read, a joyous, half hysterical little laugh.
"The man's waiting for an answer, Miss," the maid said.
Betty looked at her stupidly, and blushed:
"Why, of course, Peggy, in a moment tell him."
She wrote half a page in feverish haste, telling him how happy she was to know that he had safely returned, read it over twice, flushed with anger at her silly confusion and tore it into tiny bits. She tried again, but afraid to trust herself, spread John's note out and used it for a model,