Still struggling with her emotions, Jane allowed him to place a chair for her and seated herself, striving all the while to crush back into her heart the warmth of feeling toward him that always overwhelmed her in his presence, endeavoring to present to him a mask of cold indifference.  Yet her curiosity, as well as her affections, had been greatly stirred by his remark.  What was it that he was about to say to her?  Did he intend, in spite of the insurmountable obstacles between them, dared he, ask her to marry him?  Tremblingly she waited for what he had to say.

“Jane,” he said, “you know that I love you.  I am confident, too, that you love me.”

“I don’t love you,” she forced her unwilling lips to say.  “I can’t.  When our country is at war, when she needs men, brave men, how could any true American girl love any man who stayed at home, who idled about the hotels, who—­”

“Girl,” his voice grew suddenly stern and commanding, softening a little as he repeated her name, “Jane, dear, let me finish.  I love you.  There are grave reasons—­all-important reasons—­why I may not now ask you to be my wife.”

“I never could be your wife,” she cried desperately, “the wife of a—­”

The word died in her throat.  She could not bring herself to tell him, the man she loved, the thing she knew he was.

“My Jane,” he said, wholly unheeding her impassioned protest, “you know little yet of what life means in this great world of ours.  You, here in your parents’ home, sheltered, protected, inexperienced, have not the knowledge nor the means of judging me.  You must take me on faith, on the faith of your love for me.  For a woman, life holds but two great treasures, two loves—­her husband’s and her children’s.  With a man it is different.  Love is his, too, but there is something more, something bigger—­duty.  Here in your country—­”

Even in her distress she caught his phrase “here in your country” and turned ghastly white.  Always before in talking with her he had spoken of himself as an American.  Did he realize, she wondered, that he had at last betrayed himself to her?  Was he about to strip the mask from himself and his activities at last, and in the face of it all expect her, Jane Strong, to admit that she loved him?

“Here in your country,” he went on placidly, “women forced by economic conditions have been driven from home into business, into politics, into office-holding, even into war activities.  Longing for the clinging arms of little children they are striving to forget in assuming some part in the affairs that belong properly to men.  But to the true woman love must ever mean more than duty, more than country.  Those are words for men.  A woman, if she would find happiness, must follow her heart, must forsake all for the man she loves.  A woman’s duty is only to the man she loves, just as a man’s duty is to be true to himself, to his country.”

“But,” she cried, “you told me you were American, that you were born here?”