"You see, Dan, what I couldn't understand is how any man who has felt the pain and the glory of this, with his hand clasped in the hand of the woman he loves, their two souls mirrored in that first pair of mysterious little eyes God sent from eternity—how he could forget the tie that binds——"
He made no effort to interrupt her until the last bitter thought that had been rankling in her heart was out. He was looking thoughtfully over the valley. An eagle poised above the field in the foreground, darted to the stubble with lightning swiftness and rose with a fluttering brown quail in his talons. His shrill cry of triumph rang pitilessly in the stillness of the heights.
The little figure gave an unconscious shiver and she added in low tones:
"I'm never going to speak of this nameless thing again, Dan, but you asked me this morning and I've told you what was in my heart. I just couldn't understand how you could forget——"
"Only a beast could, dearest," he answered with a curl of the lip. "I'm something more than that now, taught by the bitterness of experience. You're just a sweet, innocent girl who has never looked the world as it is in the face. Reared as you were, you can't understand that there's a difference as deep as the gulf between heaven and hell, in the divine love that binds my soul and body and life to you and the sudden passing of a storm of passion. Won't you try to remember this?"
"Yes, dear, I will——"
She looked into his eyes with a smile of tenderness:
"A curious change is coming over you, Dan. I can begin to see it. There used to be a line of cruelty sometimes about your mouth and a flash of it in your eyes. They're gone. There's something strong and tender, wise and sweet, in their place. If I were an artist I could paint it but I can't just tell you what it is. I used to think the cruel thing I saw in you was the memory of the war. Your eyes saw so much of blood and death and pain and cruelty——"
"Perhaps it was," he said slowly. "War does make men cruel—unconsciously cruel. We lose all sense of the value of human life——"