"You're fooling yourself, darling! You couldn't have done what you did,
if you hadn't loved me. It came to me in a flash as I held you in my
arms and pressed you to my heart. There can be no other woman on earth
for me after that moment. I lived a life time with it. Say you'll be
mine, dearest?"
"But I don't love you, Ned, as you love me----"
"I don't ask it now. I can wait. The revelation will come to you at last
in the fullness of time--promise me, dearest--promise me!"
For an hour he poured into her ears his passionate tender plea, until
the rapture of his love, the perfumed air of the spring night, and the
shimmer of moonlit waters stole into her lonely heart with resistless
charm.
She lifted her lips to his at last and whispered:
"Yes."
CHAPTER XXIX
THE PANIC
The morning after Betty returned to Carver Hospital from the front, a
mother was pouring out her heart in a burst of patriotic joy over a
wounded boy.
She thought of the lonely figure in the White House treading the wine
press of a Nation's sorrow alone and asked the mother to go with her to
the President, meet him and repeat what she had said. She consented at
once.
For the first time Betty failed to gain admission promptly. Mr.
Stoddard, his third Secretary, was at the door.
"We must let him eat something, Miss Winter," he whispered.
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