“Haven’t you any idea to suggest?”
“I don’t—don’t want to die,” she repeated in an unsteady voice.
He bit his lip; and after a moment’s scowling silence under the merciless scrutiny of her eyes: “Then you had better marry me,” he said.
It was some time before she spoke. For a second or two he sustained the searching quality of her gaze, but it became unendurable.
Presently she said: “I don’t ask it of you. I can shoulder my own burdens.” And he remembered what he had just said to Recklow.
“You’ve shouldered more than your share,” he blurted out. “You are deliberately risking death to serve your country. I enlisted you. The least I can do is to say my affections are not engaged; so naturally the idea of—of marrying anybody never entered my head.”
“Then you do not care for anybody else?”
Her candour amazed and disconcerted him.
“No.” He looked at her, curiously. “Do you care for anybody in that way?”
A light blush tinted her face. She said gravely: “If we really are going to marry each other I had better tell you that I did care for Prince Sanang.”