He had that quiet air of restrained strength, of the instinctive habit of command which somehow or other does not distinguish any other fighting man in the world in quite the same degree.

His name and title were Lieutenant-Commander Mark Gwynne Merrill, of His Majesty's Destroyer _Blazer_, one of the coolest-headed and yet most judiciously reckless officers in the Service.
There was a light in his wide-set, blue-grey eyes, and a smile on his strong, well-cut lips which were absolutely boyish in their anticipation of sheer delight as she approached; and then, after one glance at her face, his own changed with a suddenness, which, to a disinterested observer, would have been almost comic.
"I'm awfully sorry, Mark," she began, in a tone which literally sent a shiver--a real physical shiver--through him, for he was very, very much in love with her.
"What on earth is the matter, Niti ?" he said, looking at the fair face and downcast eyes which, for the first time since he had asked the eternal question and she had answered it according to his heart's desire, had refused to meet his.

"Let's have it out at once.

It's a lot better to be shot through the heart than starved to death, you know.

I suppose it's something pretty bad, or you wouldn't be looking down at the grass like that," he continued.
"Oh, it's--it's--it's a _beastly_ shame, that's what it is, so there!" And as she said this Miss Nitocris Marmion, B.Sc., stamped her foot on the turf and felt inclined to burst out crying, just as a milkmaid might have done.
"Which means," said Mark, pulling himself up, as a man about to face a mortal enemy would do, "that the Professor has said 'No.' In other words, he has decided that his learned and lovely daughter shall not, as I suppose he would put it, mate with an animal of a lower order--a mere fighting-man.