Page:Biggers and Ritchie - Inside the Lines.djvu/358

 quailing before the imminent separation. He spoke:

"Go back to the States now; go back and show this Hildebrand person you're a wonder—a prize. Show him what I've known more and more surely every moment since that meeting in Calais. But give him fair warning; he's going to lose you."

"Lose me?" she echoed.

"Inevitably. Listen, girl! In a year my term of service is up, and if the war's over I shall leave the army, come to the States to you, and—and—do you think I could become a good American?"

"If—if you have the proper teacher," the girl answered, with a flash of mischief.

"All aboard for the Saxonia!" It was Consul Reynolds, fussed, perspiring, overwhelmed with the sense of his duty, who bustled up to where the Shermans were chatting with Lady Crandall and the general. Reynolds' sharp eye caught an intimate tableau on the other side of the auto. "And that means you, Miss Step-lively New York," he shouted, "much as I hate to—ah—interrupt."

Jane Gerson saw her two precious hampers