In Secret

"Kay, you're a poet!" she exclaimed.

"We all are here, Yellow-hair. There's naught else in Scotland," he said laughing.

The man was absolutely transformed, utterly different. She had never imagined that a "cure" meant the revelation of this unsuspected personality--this alternation of pleasant gravity and boyish charm.

Something of what preoccupied her he perhaps suspected, for the colour came into his handsome lean features again and he picked up his rod, rising as she rose.

"Are there no instructions yet?" she inquired.

As he stood there threading the silk line through the guides he told her about the visit of No. 67.

"I fancy instructions will come before long," he remarked, casting a leaderless line out across the grass. After a moment he glanced rather gravely at her where she stood with hands linked behind her, watching the graceful loops which his line was making in the air.

"You're not worried, are you, Yellow-hair?"

"About the Boche?"

"I meant that."

"No, Kay, I'm not uneasy."

And when the girl had said it she knew that she had meant a little more; she had meant that she felt secure with this particular man beside her.

It was a strange sort of peace that was invading her--an odd courage quite unfamiliar--an effortless pluck that had suddenly become the most natural thing in the world to this girl, who, until then, had clutched her courage desperately in both hands, commended her soul to God, her body to her country's service.

Frightened, she had set out to do this service, knowing perfectly what sort of fate awaited her if she fell among the Boche.

Frightened but resolute she faced the consequences with this companion about whom she knew nothing; in whom she had divined a trace of that true metal which had been so dreadfully tarnished and transmuted.

And now, here in this ancient garden--here in the sun of earliest summer, she had beheld a transfiguration. And still under the spell of it, still thrilled by wonder, she had so utterly believed in it, so ardently accepted it, that she scarcely understood what this transfiguration had also wrought in her. She only felt that she was no longer captain of their fate; that he was now; and she resigned her invisible insignia of rank with an unconscious little sigh that left her pretty lips softly parted.

At that instant he chanced to look up at her. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in the world. And she had looked at him out of those golden eyes when he had been less than a mere brute beast.... That was very hard to know and remember .... But it was the price he had to pay--that this fresh, sweet, clean young thing had seen him as he once had been, and that he never could forget what she had looked upon.