In reply the girl let her hands fall gently into her lap and gazed directly into the handsome, clear-cut face above her own.
"Why should I try to deceive you? It would be only sheer pretence. You are the only man I have ever cared for or ever shall. But I'll never marry you under any possible circumstances. I am too old and too unattractive and too—oh, a hundred other things."
But Captain Castaigne was smiling in entire serenity.
"We will marry at the little 'Farmhouse with the Blue Front Door' during my next leave of absence."
But Barbara and Dick were at this moment entering the blue front door.
Half an hour later, when they had finished Christmas dinner, Dick Thornton drew a magazine from his pocket, which had on its cover the sign of the Red Cross.
"Here is a poem some one in America has written called 'She of the Red Cross.' Will you listen while I read it to you? To me the poem, of course, means Barbara and to Captain Castaigne, Eugenia."
"She fulfills the dramatic destiny of woman,
Because she stands valiant, in the presence of pestilence,