s.

"It's like balm," he whispered. "I've dreamed at night of this."

"Every day I'll do it," she said. "Only--for a little while--you 'll
not ask for anything more, Peter?"

"Not until some day they open--in answer to that call," he replied.

"I did n't mean that, Peter," she said hurriedly. "Only I'm so mixed
up myself."

"It's so new to you," he nodded. "To me it's like a day foreseen a
dozen years. Long before I saw you I knew I was getting ready for you.
Now--what do a few weeks matter?"

"It may be months, Peter, before I'm quite steady."

"Even if it's years," he exclaimed, "I've felt your lips."

"Only on your eyes," she cried in terror.

"I--I would n't dare to feel them except on my eyes--for a little
while. Even there they take away my breath."

CHAPTER XXIII

LETTERS

Letter from Peter Noyes to Monte Covington, received by the latter at
the Hotel Normandie, Paris, France:--

NICE, FRANCE, July 22.

_Dear Covington_:--

I don't know whether you can make out this scrawl, because I have to
feel my way across the paper; but I'm sitting alone in my room, aching
to talk with you as we used to talk. If you were here I know you would
be glad to listen, because--suddenly all I told you about has come true.

Riding to Cannes the very next day after you left, I spoke to her
and--she listened. It was all rather vague and she made no promises,
but she listened. In a few weeks or months or years, now, she'll be
mine for all time. She does n't want me to tell Beatrice, and there is
no one else to tell except you--so forgive me, old man, if I let myself
loose.

Besides, in a way, you're responsible. We were talking of you, because
we missed you. You have a mighty good friend in her, Covington. She
knows you--the real you that I thought only I had glimpsed. She sees
the man in the game--not the man in the grand-stand. Her Covington is
the man they used to give nine long Harvards for. I never heard that
in front of my name. I was a grind--a "greasy grind," they used to
call me. It did n't hurt, for I smiled in rather a superior sort of
way at the men I thought were wasting their energy on the gridiron.
But, after all, you fellows got something out of it that the rest of us
did n't get. A 'Varsity man remains a 'Varsity man all his life.
To-day you stand before her as a 'Varsity man. I think she always
thinks of you as in a red sweater with a black "H." Any time that you
feel