"
"I should keep out of it if I were you," laughed Joan.
"I can't," he answered. "I'm too great a coward."
"An odd reason for enlisting," thought Joan.
"I couldn't face it," he went on; "the way people would be looking at me
in trains and omnibuses; the things people would say of me, the things I
should imagine they were saying; what my valet would be thinking of me.
Oh, I'm ashamed enough of myself. It's the artistic temperament, I
suppose. We must always be admired, praised. We're not the stuff that
martyrs are made of. We must for ever be kow-towing to the cackling
geese around us. We're so terrified lest they should hiss us."
The street was empty. They were pacing it slowly, up and down.
"I've always been a coward," he continued. "I fell in love with you the
first day I met you on the stairs. But I dared not tell you."
"You didn't give me that impression," answered Joan.
She had always found it difficult to know when to take him seriously and
when not.
"I was so afraid you would find it out," he explained.
"You thought I would take advantage of it," she suggested.
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