THE GAY COCKADE
"Silly," she said; "any man could carry me across the stream—but only you could write that chapter in the middle of the book."
"You liked it?" he cried, radiantly.
"Like it?" she asked. "I read it once, and then I read it again—on my knees."
Her voice seemed to drop away breathless. Behind them Otto Brand tramped, whistling; but he might have been a tree, or the sky, or the distant hills, for all the thought they took of him.
"I wanted to beg your pardon," the girl went on, "for what I said the other day—it is a great thing to write a book like that—greater than fighting a battle or saving a life, for it saves people's ideals; perhaps in that way it saves their souls."
"Then I may sleep in the canopy bed?" His voice was calm, but inwardly he was much shaken by her emotion.
Her eyes, as she turned to him, had in them the dawn of that for which he had hoped.
"Why not?" she said, quickly. "You are greater than your grandfather—you are" She stopped and laughed a little, and, in this moment of her surrender, her beauty shone like a star.
"Oh, little great man," she said, tremulously, "your head touches the skies!"
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