Mrs. Sessions had drawn insensibly closer to the speaker as the story progressed. But she had not once interrupted. Nor, now that the tale was done, did she speak.
“Now you know it all,” he said, breaking the long silence. “And I suppose you’re as disgusted with me as I am with myself. As General Scott was when I—”
He caught his breath with a gasp. Something in falling had touched the back of his outflung hand.
Something tiny, and stingingly hot—a tear!
“Mrs. Sessions!” he exclaimed in wonder.
“I—I’m not given to blubbering,” she answered, choking back her sobs. “I didn’t know I was doing it. Oh, you poor, poor dear!”
“You don’t despise me, after all I’ve told you about—”
“Despise you?” she echoed, almost shrilly. “Despise you? Listen to me, sergeant! Any man can strut around, pompouslike, on the top of the mountain if he was born up there or boosted up there. But the man who can climb there—as you’ve done—who can climb there out of the mire and muck that he’s been shoved down into; that man’s a—a man! And the mud on his garments comes pretty close to looking like royal ermine.
“I’m talking like a schoolgirl that reads novels. But it’s all true. Sergeant Brinton, I’d like to shake you by the hand, please. I wish Ehud was here to do it, too!”
Dad, even as he groped for and found the warm and slender little hand in the darkness, could not bring himself to give mental endorsement to the last half of her wish. He was quite satisfied that the late Captain Ehud should remain in Paradise, instead of invading his earthly home’s attic just then.