“Well—­yes.  Why do you?  It does not strike me as very humorous.”

At that he laughed again—­laughed so whole-heartedly, so delightfully, that the winning smile curved her own lips once more.

“Would you tell me why you laugh?” she inquired.

“I don’t know.  It seems so funny—­those Huns, those Boches, already smeared from hair to feet with blood—­pausing in their wholesale butchery to devise a plan to murder me!”

His face altered; he raised himself on one elbow: 

“The swine have turned all Europe into a bloody wallow.  They’re belly-deep in it—­Kaiser and knecht!  But that’s only part of it.  They’re destroying souls by millions!...  Mine is already damned.”

Miss Erith sprang to her feet:  “I tell you not to say such a thing!” she cried, exasperated.  “You’re as young as I am!  Besides, souls are not slain by murder.  If they perish it’s suicide, always!”

She began to pace the white room nervously, flinging open her fur coat as she turned and came straight back to his bed again.  Standing there and looking down at him she said: 

“We’ve got to fight it out.  The country needs you.  It’s your bit and you’ve got to do it.  There’s a cure for alcoholism—­Dr. Langford’s cure.  Are you afraid because you think it may hurt?”

He lay looking up at her with hell’s own glimmer in his eyes again: 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.  “You talk of cures, and I tell you that I’m half dead for a drink right now!  And I’m going to get up and dress and get it!”

The expression of his features and his voice and words appalled her, left her dumb for an instant.  Then she said breathlessly: 

“You won’t do that!”

“Yes I will.”

“No.”

“Why not?” he demanded excitedly.

“You owe me something.”

“What I said was conventional.  I’m not grateful to you for saving the sort of life mine is!”

“I was not thinking of your life.”

After a moment he said more quietly:  “I know what you mean....  Yes, I am grateful.  Our Government ought to know.”

“Then tell me, now.”

“You know,” he said brutally, “I have only your word that you are what you say you are.”

She reddened but replied calmly:  “That is true.  Let me show you my credentials.”

From her muff she drew a packet, opened it, and laid the contents on the bedspread under his eyes.  Then she walked to the window and stood there with her back turned looking out at the falling snow.

After a few minutes he called her.  She went back to the bedside, replaced the packet in her muff, and stood waiting in silence.

He lay looking up at her very quietly and his bruised young features had lost their hard, sullen expression.