king
all night and all day long."

"You look as if you had been crying a little, too," he said with his
queer smile.

"That's all past. I've been thinking, and worshipping _you_. Don't you
suppose I know all that you've been through, to come to this? I've
followed you every step from your old theories and opinions."

"Well, you've had a long row to hoe."

"And I know you've done this from the highest motives--"

"Oh, there won't be much pettifogging to do till this cruel war is--"

"And you haven't simply done it for my sake. I couldn't respect you if
you had."

"Well, then we'll say I haven't. A man that hasn't got his own respect
intact wants the respect of all the other people he can corner. But we
won't go into that. I'm in for the thing now, and we've got to face our
future. My idea is that this isn't going to be a very protracted
struggle; we shall just scare the enemy to death before it conies to a
fight at all. But we must provide for contingencies, Editha. If anything
happens to me--"

"Oh, George!" She clung to him sobbing.

"I don't want you to feel foolishly bound to my memory. I should hate
that, wherever I happened to be."

"I am yours, for time and eternity--time and eternity." She liked the
words; they satisfied her famine for phrases.

"Well, say eternity; that's all right; but time's another thing; and I'm
talking about time. But there is something! My mother! If anything
happens--"

She winced, and he laughed. "You're not the bold soldier-girl of
yesterday!" Then he sobered. "If anything happens, I want you to help my
mother out. She won't like my doing this thing. She brought me up to
think war a fool thing as well as a bad thing. My father was in the
civil war; all through it; lost his arm in it." She thrilled with the
sense of the arm round her; what if that should be lost? He laughed as
if divining her: "Oh, it doesn't run in the family, as far as I know!"
Then he added, gravely, "He came home with misgivings about war, and
they grew on him. I guess he and mother agreed between them that I was
to be brought up in his final mind about it; but that was before my
time. I only knew him from my mother's report of him and his opinions; I
don't know whether they were hers first; but they were hers last. This
will be a blow to her. I shall have to write and tell her--"

He stopped, and she asked, "Would you like me to write too, George?"

"I don't believe that would do. No, I'll do the w