of his! What
tenderness and longing and passion in the outstretched arms! She looked
shyly up at him, trembling in spite of herself, but not yet yielding.

"You know I've had no time to more than glance at it," she said. "I had
hoped to read it this evening, but, you see, visitors came in. I must
read it all carefully to-morrow."

"Ah," he said, "you have me at your mercy. You wrung those promises from
me, and now----" She backed away from him a bit, he looked so fiercely
reproachful, but he followed. She upheld her hands in warning, and he
strove to seize them, but they evaded him.

"You are proud, stern, unyielding," he said at last, and turned half
helplessly away, then caught sight of the feathery spray now almost over
her bonny, curly head. "If it were _only_ Christmas time again! I'd
claim the privilege of the mistletoe."

The room was very still a moment. She stood there with bounding,
throbbing heart, her swimming eyes fixed on his strong, soldierly face,
so powerful in its pleading, so helpless through his pledge. She saw
that he would not break his promise, yet that her lightest word, her
faintest signal, would unchain him. She saw even in the sterner lines
about his forehead something of the look of utter weariness and defeat
that hovered there the night they bore the senseless burden within those
very doors, and in one great wave of tenderness, of answering love and
joy and longing, the woman in her triumphed at last.

[Illustration: "Is it potent--only at Christmas?"]

Only like a whisper, so soft, so tremulous was her voice, the needed
words were spoken:

"Is it potent--only at Christmas?"

But he heard, and sprang to her and caught her in his arms. Little
heroine though she was, what a tame surrender after all!

THE END.

_THE LOTOS LIBRARY_.

Illustrated. 16mo. Polished buckram.

75 cents per volume.

By ELIZABETH PHIPPS TRAIN.

A SOCIAL HIGHWAYMAN.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY.

By HARRIET RIDDLE DAVIS.

IN SIGHT OF THE GODDESS.

A Tale of Washington Life.

By ROBERT BUCHANAN.

A MARRIAGE BY CAPTURE.

A Romance of To-Day.

By JULIAN HAWTHORNE.

THE GOLDEN FLEECE.

BY CAPTAIN CHARLES KING, U.S.A.

A TAME SURRENDER. A Story of the Chicago Strike.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Tame Surrender, A Story of The
Chicago Strike, by Charles King

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