“I think so.”

“May I come to-morrow?”

“It’s Sunday; and Daddy’s last day.”

“Ah!  Of course.”  He did not dare look back, to see if her gaze was following him, but he thought:  ’Chance or no chance, I’m going to fight for her tooth and nail.’

In a room darkened against the evening sun Pierson was sitting on a sofa reading.  The sight of that figure in khaki disconcerted Fort, who had not realised that there would be this metamorphosis.  The narrow face, clean-shaven now, with its deep-set eyes and compressed lips, looked more priestly than ever, in spite of this brown garb.  He felt his hope suddenly to be very forlorn indeed.  And rushing at the fence, he began abruptly: 

“I’ve come to ask you, sir, for your permission to marry Noel, if she will have me.”

He had thought Pierson’s face gentle; it was not gentle now.  “Did you know I was here, then, Captain Fort?”

“I saw Noel in the garden.  I’ve said nothing to her, of course.  But she told me you were starting to-morrow for Egypt, so I shall have no other chance.”

“I am sorry you have come.  It is not for me to judge, but I don’t think you will make Noel happy.”

“May I ask you why, sir?”

“Captain Fort, the world’s judgment of these things is not mine; but since you ask me.  I will tell you frankly.  My cousin Leila has a claim on you.  It is her you should ask to marry you.”

“I did ask her; she refused.”

“I know.  She would not refuse you again if you went out to her.”

“I am not free to go out to her; besides, she would refuse.  She knows I don’t love her, and never have.”

“Never have?”

“No.”

“Then why—­”

“Because I’m a man, I suppose, and a fool”

“If it was simply, ‘because you are a man’ as you call it, it is clear that no principle or faith governs you.  And yet you ask me to give you Noel; my poor Noel, who wants the love and protection not of a ‘man’ but of a good man.  No, Captain Fort, no!”

Fort bit his lips.  “I’m clearly not a good man in your sense of the word; but I love her terribly, and I would protect her.  I don’t in the least know whether she’ll have me.  I don’t expect her to, naturally.  But I warn you that I mean to ask her, and to wait for her.  I’m so much in love that I can do nothing else.”

“The man who is truly in love does what is best for the one he loves.”  Fort bent his head; he felt as if he were at school again, confronting his head-master.  “That’s true,” he said.  “And I shall never trade on her position.  If she can’t feel anything for me now or in the future, I shan’t trouble her, you may be sure of that.  But if by some wonderful chance she should, I know I can make her happy, sir.”

“She is a child.”

“No, she’s not a child,” said Fort stubbornly.

Pierson touched the lapel of his new tunic.  “Captain Fort, I am going far away from her, and leaving her without protection.  I trust to your chivalry not to ask her, till I come back.”