face relaxed its passion. The tears came again into his eyes,
also. Geisner smoked his cigarette, the most unmoved of any.

"If you had only known him years ago," went on Connie, her voice
trembling. "He used to take me on his knee when I was a little girl, and
keep me there for hours while great men talked great things and he was
greatest of them all. He was young then and rich and handsome and fiery,
and with a brain--oh, such a brain!--that put within his reach what
other men care for most. And he gave it all up, everything--even Love,"
she added, softly. "When he played the Marseillaise just now, I thought
of it. One day he came to our house and played it so, and outside the
people in the streets were marching by singing it, and--and--" she
set her teeth on a great sob. "My father never came back nor my brother,
and Harry there came one night and took Josie and me away. We had no
mother. And when we saw this man again he was what he is now. It was
worse than death, ten thousand times worse. Oh! Geisner, Geisner!" The
head her hand rested on had sunk down. What were the little man's
thoughts? What were they?

"But his heart is still the same, Ned," she cried, triumphantly, her
sweet voice ringing clear again. "Ah, yes! His heart is still the same,
as brave and true and pure and strong. Oh, purer, better! If it came
again, Ned, he would do it. Sometimes, I think, he doubts himself but I
know. He would do it all again and suffer it all--that worse than death
he suffered. For, you see, he only lives to serve the Cause, in a
different way to the old way but still to serve it. And I serve the Cause
also as best I can, even if I wear--" she shrugged her shoulders. "And
Harry serves it still as loyally as when, a beardless lad, he risked his
life to care for a slaughtered comrade's orphan children. And Ford, too,
and Nellie here, and Arty and Josie and George. But Geisner serves it
best of all if it be best to give most. He has given most all his life
and he gives most still. And we love him for it. And that love, perhaps,
is sweeter to him than all he might have been."

She knelt by his side as she ceased speaking, and put her arms round his
neck as he crouched there. "Geisner!" Nellie who was nearest heard her
whisper in her childhood's tongue. "Geisner! We have seen the dry bones
become men. We have poured our blood and our brain into them and if only
for a moment they have lived, they have lived. Ah, comrade, do you
r