'Well,' Sheilah admitted, 'perhaps if Felix were a fine and splendid figure in his uniform whom everybody praised and admired, he wouldn't need me and my loyalty so much. But oh—don't you see, as it is, he has no one else—nothing else—but me in the world, to make up a little for all he is suffering? I've talked to mother. I've tried to explain. But she just can't see it.'
That was why Sheilah was's seated at three o'clock in the afternoon in John Sheldon's office—because Dora couldn'tseeit. Nor Sidney either. Distraught, they had both sought John Sheldon the night before. He told them to send Sheilah around sometime, and he'd talk it over with her.
'It strikes me a promise of marriage is pretty big recompense for a girl to pay a man for doing his duty,' he remarked when Sheilah paused.
'It doesn't strike me so,' instantly she replied. And John could feel the iron in her. 'Nor my friends either. We think it's the least a girl can do for a boy who is willing to risk his life. It's been done before, you know I'm not the only girl who has married a soldier just before he went to war.'
'But usually the girl loves the soldier, Sheilah.'
She didn't flinch at that.
'I do, too,' she replied.
'You love Felix?'
'I think so,' she went on, calm, quiet, judicial. 'I
