"Is anything wrong?" he asked, in a tone which was fairly sepulchral.

"That's what I want to know, Dick."

Suddenly he found himself violently angry. Not at her, of course. At
everything.

"Wrong?" he said, savagely. "Yes. Everything is wrong!"

Then he was angry! She went rather pale.

"What have I done, Dick?"

As suddenly as he had been fierce he was abject and ashamed. Startled,
too.

"You?" he said. "What have you done? You're the only thing that's right
in a wrong world. You--"

He checked himself, put down his bag--he had just come in--and closed
the door into the hall. Then he stood at a safe distance from her, and
folded his arms in order to be able to keep his head-which shows how
strange the English language is.

"Elizabeth," he said gravely. "I've been a self-centered fool. I stayed
away because I've been in trouble. I'm still in trouble, for that
matter. But it hasn't anything to do with you. Not directly, anyhow."

"Don't you think it's possible that I know what it is?"

"You do know."

He was too absorbed to notice the new maturity in her face, the brooding
maternity born of a profound passion. To Elizabeth just then he was not
a man, her man, daily deciding matters of life and death, but a worried
boy, magnifying a trifle into importance.