Suddenly I bowed my head and stretched out my bare arms, the one of which bore the red scar from the wound suffered for him, and thus suppliant I waited to receive the reproaches that were due to me.

And for a long minute I waited and then again for another long period of time and no word came to me.  Then I raised my head!

For all women now in the world who have the love of a man in their hearts, and for those unborn who will come into that possession, I pray that they may be given the opportunity to plant in the hearts of those men of their desire the seed of a fine loyalty and service and comradeship, and that they may some day look into his eyes and see that seed slowly expand into a great white flower of mate love, as I beheld bloom for me in the eyes of my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner.  Long we stood there and looked into the soul of each other and let the flower grow, drinking from our hearts and the veins of our bodies until at last it was fully open; and then I went with a love cry into his arms held out to me, and pressed the heart of my soft woman’s body close against his own.

“I think my heart has always known, though my mind’s eyes were blind.  God, if I had lost you into that hell of war, you daredevil!” he whispered and I tasted the salt of his tears on my lips.

“I am a lie,” I whispered back to him.

“You are—­myself,” he laughed through a sob, and then, while with his large warm hand he held my throat as a person does the stem of a flower, he pressed his lips into mine until they reached to the heart within me.  In a moment with my hands I held him back from me.

“I must go, my beloved, even as I have said,” I cried to him.  “I cannot stay to my dishonor and to the rage and unhappiness my Uncle, the General Robert, will experience when he discovers that a girl has cheated him in his great affection and generosity to her.

“It is going to be hard on the General to have his grandmother come to life on his hands like this,” laughed my Gouverneur Faulkner, bending and placing upon the creamy lace of my Grandmamma a kiss which was warm to my heart through the beflowered silk.

“Let me die in those trenches so that he will never know,” I pleaded.

“No, sweetheart, that would be too easy.  You are going to stay right here and face the old Forty-Two Centimeter,” he made a reply to my pleading request as he bent and laid his cheek upon the lovelock.  “That curl ought to have opened my eyes when I sat and watched you open yours day before yesterday morning,” was the remark he added to his cruel command that I stay and face my very dreadful and so very much beloved Uncle, the General Robert.

“I am afraid,” I answered as I clung to him with a trembling.

“Yes, I know you are afraid of him—­or anything,” laughed my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner with a shake of my bare shoulders under his strong hands.  “But perhaps these papers I have in my pocket from Captain Lasselles, who is at the Mansion getting rid of dust, will help you out after the first explosion, which you will have to stand in a very few minutes from now, if that hall clock is correct and I know the General’s habits as I think I do.”