But she could not bear to meet his glance just yet.  Her eyes were closed, and she could only nod her head.

But Bennett took her head in both his hands and turned her face to his.  Even yet she kept her eyes closed.

“Lloyd,” he said, and his voice was almost a command; “Lloyd, look at me.  Do you love me?”

She drew a deep breath.  Then her sweet dull-blue eyes opened, and through the tears that brimmed them and wet her lashes she looked at him and met his glance fearlessly and almost proudly, and her voice trembled and vibrated with an infinite tenderness as she answered: 

“I do love you, Ward; love you with all my heart.”

Then, after a pause, she said, drawing a little from him and resting a hand upon either shoulder: 

“But listen, dear; we must not think of ourselves now.  We must think of him, so sick and weak and helpless.  This is a terrible moment in our lives.  I don’t know why it has come to us.  I don’t know why it should all have happened as it has this morning.  Just a few moments ago I was angry as I never was in my life before—­and at you—­and now it seems to me that I never was so happy; I don’t know myself any more.  Everything is confused; all we can do is to hold to what we know is right and trust that everything will be well in the end.  It is a crisis, isn’t it?  And all our lives and all our happiness depend upon how we meet it.  I am all different now.  I am not the woman I was a half-hour ago.  You must be brave for me now, and you must be strong for me and help me to do my duty.  We must live up to the best that is in us and do what we think is right, no matter what risks we run, no matter what the consequences are.  I would not have asked you to help me before—­before what has happened—­but now I need your help.  You have said I helped you to be brave; help me to be brave now, and to do what I know is right.”

But Bennett was still blind.  If she had been dear to him before, how doubly so had she become since she had confessed her love for him!  Ferriss was forgotten, ignored.  He could not let her go, he could not let her run the slightest risk.  Was he to take any chance of losing her now?  He shook his head.

“Ward!” she exclaimed with deep and serious earnestness.  “If you do not wish me to risk my life by going to my post, be careful, oh, be very careful, that you do not risk something that is more to us both than life itself, by keeping me from it.  Do you think I could love you so deeply and so truly as I do if I had not kept my standards high; if I had not believed in the things that were better than life, and stronger than death, and dearer to me than even love itself?  There are some things I cannot do:  I cannot be false, I cannot be cowardly, I cannot shirk my duty.  Now I am helpless in your hands.  You have conquered, and you can do with me as you choose.  But if you make me do what is false, and what is cowardly, and what is dishonourable; if you stand between me and what I know is my duty, how can I love you, how can I love you?”