“Oh, as to that! There might be advantages in working among strangers. Mrs. Grey fairly puts herself out to let me understand that she is a friend in need!” She reined herself up, recollecting, but too late. “Oh, Guy, don't mind so for me. Why, the South is full of women doing what I am, only so many of them are doing it--without--the Guys who never came back!” “Lucky dogs!” subterraneously. Then, seeing her apprehensive of a second flare-up of that volcanic fire: “So gentlemanly of them, too, Bibi. How can those few years of love be worth a life of this to you?” “Those few years? why, Guy! of love? Is that how _you_ feel?” Her eyes filled; her whole face quivered. “Oh, Guy--be willing for my sake. I never knew what love could mean until lately.” His grasp hurt her knuckles. “Yes, dear, I have seen. It's very sweet. It's the mother in you, Bibi, and my helplessness. Of course! What could a woman _love_ in a dependent, half-corpse of a no-man?” For a moment she was too surprised to speak. She stared at him. “What a notion! and it isn't true! You never were any more a man than you've been through these two dreadful years.” She sounded fairly indignant. “And for my part, I never appreciated what you were half as much.” “Love doesn't begin with a _P_,” he remarked to the opposite wall. “But what do you suppose the _purpose_ was?” “Love?” “More. _You_.” “You never told me.” That strange voice and averted face! “How should I fancy you wouldn't know? I had never thought it out myself until just now. It has simply been going on from day to day, as natural and quiet as growing--” A bewildering illumination was spreading in her mind. “Look here, young man”--she forced his face around to see it,--“what goblins have you been hatching in the night-watches?” The raillery broke. “Dear, is that what has been troubling you? Is there anything else?” He looked at her now. “Anything else trouble me, if I really have you, and a chance to do a little something for you?” It was their apotheosis. They had never known a moment equal to it before; could never know just another such again. In a very deep way it was the first kiss of love for them both. Bessie came back to herself with that sense of arriving, of having been infinitely away, with which one drops from abstraction. Where had they been in that state of absent mind? It was as if they had met out of time, space, matter.... And as she thought of his words, in the light of his eyes, pity too was qualified, and that without endangering helpfulness. He, too, had his balance of good. Yes, things squared in the end. Her creed was quick. The scattered dandelion seed sprouted all around her. Pap Overholt BY ALICE MACGOWAN