"Think of it. For ten years I never saw the first star without making the same wish for you and me. Why," he went on, and stopped suddenly with a little shame at making the confession even to himself, and at the same time with an impersonal wonder that such a thing could be, "I used to pray for you always--when I said my prayers--actually. And sometimes even now, when I'm pretty hopeless and helpless and moved by some memory, the old prayer comes back unconsciously and I find myself repeating your name." For the moment he spoke as though not only that old love, but she who had caused it, were dead, and the tone of his voice made her shiver. And the suffering he used to get--the suffering from trifles--the foolish suffering from silly trifles! He turned now, for he heard Judith walking toward him. She was looking him straight in the eyes and was smiling strangely. "I'm going to make you love me as you used to love me." Her lips were left half parted from the whisper, and he could have stooped and kissed her--something that never in his life had he done--he knew that--but the old reverence came back from the past to forbid him, and he merely looked down into her eyes, flushing a little. "Yes," she said, gently. "And I think you are just tall enough." In a flash her mood changed, and she drew his head down until she could just touch his forehead with her lips. It was a sweet bit of motherliness--no more--and Crittenden understood and was grateful. "Go home now," she said. VII At Tampa--the pomp and circumstance of war. A gigantic hotel, brilliant with lights, music, flowers, women; halls and corridors filled with bustling officers, uniformed from empty straps to stars; volunteer and regular--easily distinguished by the ease of one and the new and conscious erectness of the other; adjutants, millionaire aids, civilian inspectors; gorgeous attachés--English, German, Swedish, Russian, Prussian, Japanese--each wondrous to the dazzled republican eye; Cubans with cigarettes, Cubans--little and big, war-like, with the tail of the dark eye ever womanward, brave with machétes; on the divans Cuban senoritas--refugees at Tampa--dark-eyed, of course, languid of manner, to be sure, and with the eloquent fan, ever present, omnipotent--shutting and closing, shutting and closing, like the wings of a gigantic butterfly; adventurers, adventuresses; artists, photographers; correspondents by the score--female correspondents; story writers, novelists, real war correspondents, and real draughtsmen--artists, indeed; and a host of lesser men with spurs yet to win--all crowding the hotel day and night, night and day.