"No, not that," he said. "Can't you trust me, Marian?"
"Trust you!" she said impatiently. "Of course I can trust you, but why be so mysterious? Mightn't I equally say, 'Why don't you trust me?'"
"It's part of my job," said Julian quietly, "not to trust the ground we're on or the larks in the sky or the light of my heart,—that's you, Marian,—and it doesn't happen to be the easiest part of my job."
He waited for her to make it easier for him, but he waited in vain. Marian expected easy things, but she did not expect to have to make things easy. These two expectations seldom go together.
"Do you mean to tell me that you are going to be some kind of spy?" she asked in a tone of frank disgust. "Oh, Julian! I couldn't bear it! It's so—so—un-English!"
Julian chuckled. He ought not to have chuckled. If a man does not like a woman with brains, he must learn not to laugh at their absence. Marian stiffened under his laughter.
"England's got to be awfully un-English in some ways if it wants to win this war," he explained. "But you mustn't even to yourself put a name to what I'm going to be. I'm just on a job that'll take me three months, and I'm afraid, my darling, I can't send you a word. That cuts me all to bits, but you're so brave, so brave, you'll let me go."
He buried his head in the grass; he was not brave enough to bear to see the strain he was putting on her courage. Nor was Marian.
"No, Julian," she said, "you mustn't ask such a thing of me. Not to know where you are, and not to be able to tell any one what you are doing! To let you go out into the dark at a time like this! It's too much to ask of me. Promise me you'll give up all idea of it, and try to get a commission like other people. Surely that's hard enough for me. But I'll bear that; I will never make it difficult for you by a word or a look; I wouldn't hold you back a day! You've not settled anything of course?"
He told her that he had settled everything, and that in two days he must go.