Stransky deliberately, "is a little piece of metal that
I got for an inspiration of manhood. It doesn't cost the price of a
day's rations, but it's one of the things which money can't buy--not
yet--in this commercial age. One of those institutions of barbarism that
we anarchists call government gave it to me, and I'll never part with
it!"

"Because he was a brave soldier, Clarissa," explained Marta in simpler
terms. "Because he was ready to die for his country."

"And for your mother!" put in Stransky, seizing Clarissa in his great
hands and lifting her lightly to the level of his face. "Oh, I've got
stories," he said to her, "a soldier-man's stories, to tell you, young
lady, one of these days--and such stories!"

He crossed his eyes over his big nose in a fashion that made Clarissa
clap her hands and burst into a peal of laughter.

"You're an awfully funny man!" she declared as Stransky set her down.

"So your mother thinks," said Stransky, blinking at Minna, who had
indulged in a smile which his remark promptly ironed out.

This irrepressible soldier, given so much as an inch, would be demanding
a province. But erasing a smile is not destroying the fact of it.
Stransky took heart for the charge on seeing a breach in the enemy's
lines.

"Yes, I was fighting for you!" he burst out to Minna. "When the other
fellows were reading letters from their sweethearts I was imagining
letters from you. I even wrote out some and posted them from one pocket
to another, in place of the regular mails."

"What did you say in those letters?" asked Marta.

"Why, you're big and awkward and cross-eyed, Stransky, but you've a way
with you, and maybe--"

"Humph!" sniffed Minna.

"I kept seeing the way you looked when you belted me one in the face,"
he went on unabashed to Minna, "and knocked any anarchism out of me that
was left after the shell burst. I kept seeing your face in my last
glimpse when the Grays made me run for it from your kitchen door before
I had half a chance for the oration crying for voice. You were in my
dreams! You were in battle with me!"

"This sounds like a disordered mind," observed Minna. "I've heard men
talk that way before."

"Oh, I have talked that way to other women myself!" said Stransky.

"Yes," said Minna bitterly. His candor was rather unexpected.

"I have talked to others in passing on the high road," he continued.
"But never after a woman had struck me in the face. That blow sank
deep--d