He held her so until the storm had spent itself. He kept his face against her hair, soft and silky, and fragrant with orris—forgetting himself utterly in his loving pity for her. At last she moved away from him. Her tear-stained face in the moonlight, filled him with tenderness so great that his love was pain.
"It's late," she said, "it must be after one o'clock. I must go up-stairs." She started toward the open window, but still he held her back gently. "Dear," he said softly, "we've been away from each other four weeks and three days, and I've come two thousand miles to see you. You haven't kissed me yet. Don't you want to? You don't need to if you'd rather not, but if you could——"
His voice vibrated with passionate appeal. She lifted her white face to his and kissed him mechanically. "To-morrow," she breathed, "I'll be more like myself; I'll try to make up for to-night, but if you love me, let me go now!"
He went with her to the elevator, and watched until she was lifted out of his sight, smiling at her until the last—the old loving smile. He went out to the balcony again, and sat down with his arms thrown over the back of the chair that had so recently held her. His brow was wrinkled with deep thought, but his boyish mouth still smiled.
Presently there was a step behind him and he turned—to look into the face of the war correspondent who spoke first.
"I've come back," he said, "to shake hands with you, if you don't mind."
The Other Man's hand met his, more than half-way.
"And," continued the war correspondent, "I want to apologise. I've been all kinds of a brute, but what I said was the truth. I love her as no man ever before loved a woman. That's my only excuse."
"You're not to blame for loving her," returned the Other Man generously; "nobody is. And as for her loving you, that's all right too. She's got a lot of temperament and she's used to being loved, and you're not a bad sort, you know—not at all." And he concluded fondly, "my little girl was lonesome without me."
The war correspondent went away quietly. In the moonlight he could see the boyish face of the Other Man, radiant with an all-believing, all-forgiving love.