"I don't ask it now. I can wait. The revelation will come to you at last in the fullness of time—promise me, dearest—promise me!"
For an hour he poured into her ears his passionate tender plea, until the rapture of his love, the perfumed air of the spring night, and the shimmer of moonlit waters stole into her lonely heart with resistless charm.
She lifted her lips to his at last and whispered:
"Yes."
[CHAPTER XXIX]
[THE PANIC]
The morning after Betty returned to Carver Hospital from the front, a mother was pouring out her heart in a burst of patriotic joy over a wounded boy.
She thought of the lonely figure in the White House treading the wine press of a Nation's sorrow alone and asked the mother to go with her to the President, meet him and repeat what she had said. She consented at once.
For the first time Betty failed to gain admission promptly. Mr. Stoddard, his third Secretary, was at the door.