"Since those first days, Marie, when your brother and I bunked together in the old S.$1.$2.construction camp. He used to read me letters of yours from home. You were only a little girl then, and it was years before I saw you; but I knew what you looked like even before I stole your photograph----" "Stole?" "I did. Greg dropped it one day. I found it and never gave it back. There it is--after nine years." She laughed when she saw it. "Why, I can't make out to see what I looked like then, Andie!" "I know what you looked like. I've kissed the face away, dear, but I know. In nine years, Marie, I never shifted from one coat to another without shifting your photograph, too. If anything had happened to me, they would have found your photograph on me, with your address on the back. 'Then,' I used to say to myself, 'she'll know. And Greg won't mind my stealing it.'" He laid it face up between them on the table. "The miles you've travelled with me, dear heart, and never knew! Back in the days of the construction camp they used to find sketches of a girl's head in my note-books, a beautiful head badly done--drawn from that photograph. But after I met you----" "And after you met me, Andie?" "Then I needed no photograph, though look and look at it I surely did. Steamers in western seas, battle-ships in eastern waters, balustrades of palaces--wherever it might be I was whirling with this old earth around, I've had your face to look at. And when I couldn't see for the darkness--rolled up in my rubber poncho, in no more romantic a place than the muck of a swamp, I've looked up through the swaying branches--or in the lee of a windy hill, it might be, with no more to hinder than the clear air, I've looked up and marked your face in the swirling clouds: your nose, your chin, the lips so shyly smiling. And if through the clouds a pair of stars would break, I'd mark them for your shining eyes, Marie." "Poetry again, Andie!" She was laughing, but also she was melting under his eyes. "If that's poetry, then I'm losing respect for it. It's a weak thing, Marie, and----" "Sh-h--if somebody should be walking on the beach!" "Let them, sweetheart. It's a fine night for a walk. What harm is truth?" "But I don't want all the world to hear, Andie. For my poor heart was aching, too, Andie, and now it wants it all to itself, Andie mine." * * * * * It was taps on the battle-fleet. Over the mellowing, detaining waters of the bay the long-drawn bugles echoed. Good night, good ni-i-ght, g-o-o-d-n-i-g-h-t--they said, and gently, softly, whisperingly died away. "He's asleep at last." Welkie was standing in the door. "And I don't know but we'd all better be getting to sleep, too. For to-morrow morning, you know, we--Wha-at!" His friend was standing before him. "Shunt care for the morrow, Greg. Greater things than have happened are happening around you. The dream of years has come to pass. And we--we, Greg----"