And it happened that his loud cry brought a response which came to me before I was quite in readiness for it. As I reached the last step of the wide staircase, under the bright light I raised my eyes, and behold, the Gouverneur Faulkner to whom I had descended for the purpose of mortal combat, stood before me! And was it that cruel and wicked and cold Gouverneur Faulkner who was to scourge me and keep me in the house of my Uncle, the General Robert, for a dishonor? It was not. Before me stood a tall man who was of a great paleness and a terrible fatigue also, covered with the dust of a long, hard ride, with eyes that were full of a fear, who stood and looked at me with not one word of any kind. Suddenly I bowed my head and stretched out my bare arms, the one of which bore the red scar from the wound suffered for him, and thus suppliant I waited to receive the reproaches that were due to me. And for a long minute I waited and then again for another long period of time and no word came to me. Then I raised my head! For all women now in the world who have the love of a man in their hearts, and for those unborn who will come into that possession, I pray that they may be given the opportunity to plant in the hearts of those men of their desire the seed of a fine loyalty and service and comradeship, and that they may some day look into his eyes and see that seed slowly expand into a great white flower of mate love, as I beheld bloom for me in the eyes of my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner. Long we stood there and looked into the soul of each other and let the flower grow, drinking from our hearts and the veins of our bodies until at last it was fully open; and then I went with a love cry into his arms held out to me, and pressed the heart of my soft woman's body close against his own. "I think my heart has always known, though my mind's eyes were blind. God, if I had lost you into that hell of war, you daredevil!" he whispered and I tasted the salt of his tears on my lips. "I am a lie," I whispered back to him. "You are--myself," he laughed through a sob, and then, while with his large warm hand he held my throat as a person does the stem of a flower, he pressed his lips into mine until they reached to the heart within me. In a moment with my hands I held him back from me. "I must go, my beloved, even as I have said," I cried to him. "I cannot stay to my dishonor and to the rage and unhappiness my Uncle, the General Robert, will experience when he discovers that a girl has cheated him in his great affection and generosity to her. "It _is_ going to be hard on the General to have his grandmother come to life on his hands like this," laughed my Gouverneur Faulkner, bending and placing upon the creamy lace of my Grandmamma a kiss which was warm to my heart through the beflowered silk. "Let me die in those trenches so that he will never know," I pleaded.