the comrades at the station, and the time was short. So
that, immediately, I had a thought. 'My most dear,' I spoke to her. 'If
thou wilt let me go, then I promise to send thee a great, beautiful
doll, all in white, as a bride, like the cousin Annette at her wedding
last week.' And then the clinging little hands loosened, and she said,
wondering--for she is but a baby--'Wilt thou promise, my father?' And I
said, 'Yes,' and kissed her quickly, and went away. So that now that I
am wounded and am to die, that promise which I cannot keep to my
_petite_, that promise hinders me to die."

The deep, sad voice stopped and the honest eyes of the peasant boy
looked up at Evelyn, burning with the pain of his body and of his soul.
And as Evelyn looked back, holding his hand and stroking it, it was as
if the furnace of the soldier's pain melted together all the things she
had ever cared to do. Yet it was a minute before she spoke.

"Corporal," she said, "your little girl shall have her doll, I will take
it to her and tell her that her father sent it. Will you lie very still
while I go and get the doll?"

The brown eyes looked up at her astounded, radiant, and the man caught
the hem of her white veil and kissed it. "But the Americans--they do
magic. You shall see, Sister, if I shall be still. I will not die before
the Sister returns. It is a joy unheard of."

The girl ran out of the hospital and away into Paris, and burst upon
Madame. Somehow she told the story in a few words, and Madame was crying
as she laid "La Marquise" in a box.

"It is Mademoiselle who is an angel of the good God," she whispered, and
kissed Evelyn unexpectedly on both cheeks.

Corporal Duplessis lay, waxen, starry-eyed, as the American Sister came
back into the ward. His look was on her as she entered the far-away
door, and he saw the box in her arms. The girl knelt and drew out the
gorgeous plaything and stood it by the side of the still, bandaged
figure. An expression as of amazed radiance came into the fast-dimming
eyes--into those large, brown, childlike eyes which had seen so little
of the gorgeousness of earth. His hand stirred a very little--enough,
for Evelyn quickly moved the gleaming satin train of the doll under the
groping fingers. The eyes lifted to Evelyn's face and the smile in them
was that of a prisoner who suddenly sees the gate of his prison opened
and the fields of home beyond. It mattered little, one may believe, to
the welcoming host