"What?"
She had forgotten the purport of her last remark.
"He was a bit too—well, not too pro-German—but too anti-English for me. You have got hold of the wrong end of the stick all the time, Phyllis dear. I'm no more pro-German than you are. Perhaps I see things more clearly than you do. I've been trained to an intellectual view of human phenomena."
Her little pink and white face hardened until it looked almost ugly. The unpercipient young man continued:
"And so I take my stand on a position that you must accept on trust. I am English to the backbone. You can't possibly dream that I'm not. Come, dear, let me try to explain."
His arm curved as if to encircle her waist. She sprang away.
"Don't touch me. I couldn't bear it. There's something about you I can't understand."
In her attitude, too, he found a touch of the incomprehensible. He said, however, with a sneer:
"If I were swaggering about in a cheap uniform, you'd find me simplicity itself."
She caught at his opening, desperately.