"Will you write every day?" pleaded Allen, leaning close, and for the moment these two were absolutely alone. "Letters are the next best thing to having you with me, Betty. And if you stop writing, I give you fair warning I'll come straight home on the next train, furlough or no furlough, to see what the matter is; and if I get shot at sunrise, so much the better. Betty, will you promise me?" He said it pleadingly.
"I—I'll try to write every day," she answered, still not daring to look at him; "but you mustn't mind if some days it's only a little line. I'm going to be terribly busy."
"I expect to be busy, too," said Allen, drawing himself up a little; "but I'd manage to find time to write to you every day if I had to let other things go."
"Allen," she laid a hand on his arm and he covered it eagerly with his own, "I will write to you every day and it will be a good long one, too."
"Not from a sense of duty?" he asked, still a little unbelieving, though his heart was throbbing painfully. "You won't write just because you'll think I'll be expecting it, Betty?"
"No," she said, her voice very low, so low that he had to bend close to catch the words. "I'll write to you, Allen—because I—can't help myself."
"Betty," he cried, "look at me."
"Th-there's the engine whistle," she said unsteadily.
"Engine whistle be hanged!" cried Allen explosively. "Betty, I want you to look at me."
Then, as she still turned from him, he deliberately put a hand beneath her chin and turned her face to meet his.