“Now I’m worth twice what I was a minute ago!” he said. “And if I were a sneak, I should ask you to engage yourself to me straight away! But I won’t. You shall not be bound to a man who may be marked down by a Boche sniper before the month is out. No, dear! But you know I love you!—and you know I want to marry you!—when the war is over!”
“And you’ll wait till then?” she asked, suddenly with the prettiest air of pique and wonder.
He looked at her, and his heart beat quickly.
“I’ll try to!” he answered. “Unless you tempt me too far!”
Some further development of this situation might have occurred had not the sudden apparition of a misshaped “Homburg” hat and weedy-looking overcoat startled them away several paces from each other.
“Don’t let me intrude!”—and the Philosopher, slowly approaching, spoke in the mildest and most mellifluous of accents—“I have been taking a stroll by the river,—and you—dear me, yes!—it is you!” Here he surveyed Jack with a kind of quizzical tolerance—“I should hardly have known you in khaki had I met you by chance anywhere else!”
“I daresay not!” replied Jack airily. “It makes a fellow so much better-looking.”
The Philosopher smiled.
“You think so? Ah! Well,—possibly our ideas do not coincide. I cannot admit that mud-colour is becoming to any face or figure. And when are you off?”
“This week.” The reply was brief and blunt.