e dust
of a long, hard ride, with eyes that were full of a fear, who stood
and looked at me with not one word of any kind.

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 t