“They tore my paper doll to pieces when I wasn’t doin’ one thing to anybody, an’ all of ’em tramped it into the snow! Oh my God! It’s been that way with both of us, always. All our lives we was pinched an’ strangled, an’ thrown aside. They didn’t let us do any more’n just cling to the edges of life. An’ then we found one another.” She was crying now, and her words were cut in two by her gasping breath. “We found one another--we found one another, an’ then we found life! But _now_ they open the door and say, ‘Come on in.’ _Now_ they got a use for you. _Now_ they’ll let you stand up an’ git killed for ’em. They never opened the door to let you into life, but they’ve opened it up wide for you for death! No,” she cried wildly, “_you_ don’t owe folks nothin’! They never give us life--we’ve found life for ourselves together! An’ now, just as we found it, they’d snatch hit away! You don’t have to go! “You don’t _have_ to go, do you?” she repeated. He looked at her, dazzled by the flaming passion of her face. “We--we could go away an’ hide somewheres together,” he ventured, uncertainly. She stared back at him. “What would they do to you if they caught you?” she demanded. “I dunno.” He shook his head. “But--if we went--it would--you know it would break your life all to pieces. If anything was to happen to me, you couldn’t come back here.” “I never had no life to break, ’til you came into it,” she cried. “I never knew what life was. You’ve set me free! You’ve made me all I am. We’ve made each other! Our life together--our love--it’s just all there is! Oh God! Oh God!” she cried, “_Ain’t_ we got a right to it?” He bowed his head down upon their hands on the table. “My honey! My love! My little honey!” he cried. XIII The next morning Timothy Bixby left on the early train going east. Aunt Sadie came in and told Julie about it. “Well,” she announced, “Little Bixby’s gone. He got his draft call last night, an’ he left on Number Three this morning. He’ll go to Camp Lee like all the men from this section. I saw him when he left. Mis’ Bixby wasn’t up. I declare, if he didn’t have to get his own breakfast this very last morning! I told him he ought to go in and bid you good-bye, but he said he was late. He really had a plenty time; he was just makin’ up an excuse, ’cause he’s so bashful. I reckon you’ll just have to excuse him, Julie. It seems funny to me that they’d want a little scary feller like him.” “He’s not really so small,” Julie returned sharply. “He’s up to standard height.” “I know he is, but someway a person always thinks of him as sort of undersized. But I came in, Julie, to tell you something else. I’m goin’ over to stay with Betty this afternoon.” Betty was Mrs. Johnson’s daughter, who was married and living some twenty miles away in the country.