Sophie smiled up at him, and was kissed for her pains.

“Name the condition.”

“That you love me.  I’ve waited a long time for it.”

“I’ve always loved you,” she said gravely.  “Sometimes more, sometimes less.  I haven’t always believed we could be happy together.  Sometimes I have been positive we couldn’t.  But I’ve always measured other men by you, and none of them quite measured up.  That was why it stung me so to see you so indifferent about the war.  Probably if you had talked about it to me, if I had known you were thinking of going, I should have been afraid you would go, I should have been afraid for you.  But you seemed always so unconcerned.  It maddened me to think I cared so much for a man who cared nothing about wrongs and injustices, who could sit contentedly at home while other men sacrificed themselves.  My dear, I’m afraid I’m an erratic person, a woman whose heart and head are nearly always at odds.”

Thompson laughed, looking down at her with an air of pride.

“That is to say you would always rather be sure than sorry,” he remarked.  “Well, you can be sure of one thing, Sophie.  You can’t admit that you really do care for me and then run away, as you did at Lone Moose.  I have managed to stand on my own feet at last, and your penalty for liking me and managing to conceal the fact these many moons is that you must stand with me.”

She drew his face down to her and kissed it.  Thompson held her fast.

“I can stand a lot of that,” he said happily.

“You may have to,” she murmured.  “I am a woman, not a bisque doll.  And I’ve waited a long time for the right man.”

CHAPTER XXX

A MARK TO SHOOT AT

An hour or so later Sam Carr came trudging home with a rod in his hand and a creel slung from his shoulder, in which creel reposed a half dozen silver-sided trout on a bed of grass.

“Well, well, well,” he said, at sight of Thompson, and looked earnestly at the two of them, until at last a slow smile began to play about his thin lips.  “Now, like the ancient Roman, I can wrap my toga about me and die in peace.”

“Oh, Dad, what a thing to say,” Sophie protested.

“Figuratively, my dear, figuratively,” he assured her.  “Merely my way of saying that I am glad your man has come home from the war, and that you can smile again.”

He tweaked her ear playfully, when Sophie blushed.  They went into the house, and the trout disappeared kitchenward in charge of a bland Chinaman, to reappear later on the luncheon table in a state of delicious brown crispness.  After that Carr smoked a cigar and Thompson a cigarette, and Sophie sat between them with the old, quizzical twinkle in her eyes and a smile hovering about the corners of her mouth.

“Come out and let’s make the round of the works, you two,” Carr suggested at last.