She looked at him, flushed, excited, furious.
"Why do you say such untruthful things to me! Who was it that fairly kicked his fellow troopers into charging infantry with nothing but lances against bullets ?" Amazed for a second, he burst into an abrupt laugh that rang harshly in the room.
"Who told you such cock-and-bull stories, Ailsa ?" "Didn't you do it?
_Isn't_ it true ?" "Do what?
Do what the Government pays me for doing?
Yes, I happened to come up to the scratch that time.

But I was scared, every inch of me--if you really want the truth." "But--you _did_ it ?" He laughed again, harshly, but apparently puzzled by her attitude.
She came nearer, paler in her suppressed excitement.
"Private Ormond," she faltered, "the hour that you fail under fire is the hour when I--shall be able to--forget--you.
Not--until--then." Neither moved.

The slow, deep colour mounted to the roots of his hair; but she was white as death.
"Ailsa." "Yes." And suddenly he had dropped to one knee, and the hem of her gray garb was against his lips--and it was a thing of another age that he did, there on one knee at her feet, but it became him as it had become his ancestors.

And she saw it, and, bending, laid her slim hands on his head.
After a long silence, her hands still resting on his dark hair, she found voice enough to speak.
"I know you now." And, as he made no answer: "It is there, in you--all that I believed.

It was to that I--yielded--once." She looked intently down at him.
"I think at last you have become--my champion.