He dropped his voice.
"Kitty," he said, "I want you to be courageous and strong, and to help my mother. An hour of sore trial is close to her, and I have not told her yet. I do not want her to hear until the morning. Kit, little Kit, my regiment is under orders to sail for South Africa on Saturday week—just ten days from now. I have just ten more days in the old country, and during these ten days, Kitty—"
"O Gavon!" she cried, "if you go—"
"What?"
"Take me, oh, take me with you!"
"Kitty!" His tone was a shocked exclamation. He stood up also and backed away from her.
"I know what you feel," she said recklessly. "You have shown it all too plainly. I will speak now if I have to be silent all the rest of my life. Were you blind, Gavon, not to see that I—that my heart is breaking?"
"Poor little girl! But the mother would not go to South Africa, and you could not go without her."
"Oh, don't you, won't you understand?" she repeated.
He shrugged his shoulders, looked at her as she gazed up at him with all her burning passion shining in her eyes, and then sat down to face the inevitable.