Irene does ...

and last night, when I kissed him there was an answer....

Has that girl come between us again ?" And so they went on, these two, divided by a thousand miles, each absorbed in individual thought, and there was a long queer silence.
But she was there to fight, and having learned one side of men during her sordid pilgrimage and having an ally in Nature, she got up and sat down on the bunk at his side, snuggling close.
"You are cold, Tootles," he said, and put his arm round her.
And hope revived, like a dying fire licked by a sudden breeze, and she put her bobbed head on his broad shoulder.
But he was away again, miles and miles away, thinking back, unfolding all the moments of his first companionship with Joan and looking at them wistfully to try and find some tenderness; thinking forward, with the picture of Joan's face before him and wondering what would come into her eyes when he laid his heart bare for her gaze.
Waiting and waiting, on the steady rise and fall of his chest,--poor little starved Tootles, poor little devil,--tears began to gather, tears as hot as blood, and at last they broke and burst in an awful torrent, and she flung herself face down upon the other bunk, crying incoherently to God to let her die.
And once more the boy's spirit, wandering high in pure air, fell like the stick of a rocket, and he sprang up and bent over the pitiful little form,--not understanding because Joan held his heart and kept it clean.
"Tootles," he cried out.

"Dear old Tootles.

What is it?
What's happened ?" But there was only brotherliness in his kind touch, only the same solicitude that he had shown her all along.