"How did you hear the name of my father, Mr. Loutrelle?" she asked.
"Oh!" he said, and she recognized, as she looked up at him, that he had been expecting the question and had been trying, unsuccessfully, to be ready for it. "That came up, in England—in London, Miss Carew, when I was in France."
It was plain that he realized he had replied incoherently; so Ethel waited.
"In November, about two months ago," he added.
"When my father's name came up in London? How?"
"In a letter to me, Miss Carew."
"I see. You knew one of his men!"
"No; it wasn't like that—not at all like that. It happened just before the armistice, Miss Carew. Huston Adley was in London—" He was in difficulties with the telling; but now he did not want to stop, as he hesitated and looked down at her. "We're not going too fast?"he asked.
"Not now," Ethel assured. They had, indeed, almost halted as they entered the woods, keeping to the course of the snow-obliterated road winding between the trees. And, as Ethel watched her companion, suddenly she better comprehended the nature of the constraint which had held him. What he had to say was far too serious and personal to be discussed in the publicity and amid the interruptions of the train. She realized that he had been counting upon—or at least hoping for—some such chance as this of talking to her alone.
"Your father's name came to me first in a letter from London, Miss Carew," he said. "I think, after all"—he referred aloud thus to some debate which
