"Humph!" sniffed Minna.
"I kept seeing the way you looked when you belted me one in the face," he went on unabashed to Minna, "and knocked any anarchism out of me that was left after the shell burst. I kept seeing your face in my last glimpse when the Grays made me run for it from your kitchen door before I had half a chance for the oration crying for voice. You were in my dreams! You were in battle with me!"
"This sounds like a disordered mind," observed Minna. "I've heard men talk that way before."
"Oh, I have talked that way to other women myself!" said Stransky.
"Yes," said Minna bitterly. His candor was rather unexpected.
"I have talked to others in passing on the high road," he continued. "But never after a woman had struck me in the face. That blow sank deep—deep—deep as what Lanstron said when I revolted on the march. I say it to you with this"—he touched the cross—"on my breast. And I'm not going to give you up. It's a big world. There's room in it for a place for you after the war is over and I'm going to make the place. Yes, I've found myself. I've found how to lead men. My home isn't to be in the hedgerows any more. It's to be where you are. You and I, whom society gave a kick, will make society give us a place!" He was eloquent in his strength; eloquent in the fire of resolution blazing from his eyes. "And I'll be back again," he concluded. "You can't shake me. I'll camp on your door-step. But now I've got to look after my company. Good-by till I'm back—back to stay! Good-by, little daughter!" he added with a wave of his hand to Clarissa as he turned to go. "Maybe we shall have our own automobile some day. It's no stranger than what's been happening to me since the war began."
"If you don't marry him, Minna, I'll—I'll—" Mrs. Galland could not find words for the fearful thing that she would do.
"Marry him! I have only met him three times for about three minutes each time!" protested Minna. She was as rosy as a girl and in her confusion she busied herself retying the ribbon on Clarissa Eileen's hair. "He called you little daughter!" she said softly to the child as she withdrew into the tower.
"I am glad we didn't send Minna away when misfortune befell her," said Mrs. Galland. "You were right about that, Marta, with your new ideas. What a treasure she has been!"
Marta was scarcely hearing her mother; certainly not finding any credit for herself in the remark. She was thinking what a simple, what a glorious thing was a love such as Stransky's and Minna's: the mating of a man and a woman whose brains were not oversensitized by too complicated mentality; of a man and a woman direct and sincere, primarily and clearly a man and a woman. Such happiness could never be for her now; for her who had let a man make love to her for his own undoing.