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you are there, Jock Hamill." The face of Parke Demorest of Demorest Motors flashed across his vision and was gone, without effect. He put his arms about Yvonne, and his voice shook a little in the force of its sincerity. "Darling—the only thing you could possibly say that would matter would be that—well, that there isn't any hope for me, ever. That would rip me up into a million pieces. But nothing else in the world could make any difference. Not any thing." His arms tightened their hold. "Oh, sweet—sweet—as long as I can have you like this—" He laughed exultantly. "Bring on your German armies!"

He did not attempt to kiss her again for a while. There was an exquisite torture in postponement. They rode on, and she nestled close to him . . . so close that now and then he could feel her eyelashes against his cheek, like the fluttering wings of satin butterflies. And he talked. Rapidly and gayly, giving all the things pent up for months expression, "I missed you—Lord, how I did miss you! No matter what I did, or where I was, or who I was with, there was a walloping big emptiness inside of me all the time, because you were gone. I used to do the darnedest things, Yvonne! Walk at night and stare at the stars, because the same stars were a canopy over you. . . . There never was a beautiful sunset or a full moon that I didn't wonder if you were looking at it, too. And once when I was in New York I broke away from the gang and spent the whole afternoon tramping around through Central Park, thinking, 'Now here she said this to me, and here she looked such-and-such a way.' And then I went and gaped at your apartment house until they nearly pinched me for loitering. . . . And I used to make up lists of things you remind me of. Things like opals, and wind, and white birch trees