He looked at her searchingly, to see how much truth there might be in that, but he could not guess the meaning of the whimsical look in her eyes, nor of the sudden blush that flamed into her cheeks after those careless words of hers.
After the reading of the last chapter, he asked his usual question: What did she think? Any good? Or had he wasted his time, and his hopes?
She did not answer for a little while, and then suddenly took both his hands.
“It’s good! . . . Not all the truth, but all true. . . . A good book, soldier man, and almost great! Thank God, you’ve written it!”
These words warmed his soul. He was enormously grateful for them. A wave of emotion swept over him because this praise, so simply spoken, so generously, by this girl who understood, was a reward for his labour.
He raised her hands to his lips, and kissed them.
“Whatever happens to the book,” he said, “your sympathy and help have been tremendous to me. How can I pay back?”
She let her hands linger in his, not deliberately, but carelessly. She laughed at his suggestion of “paying back,” and called him by the absurd nickname which she had invented for him.
“No fee, Sir Faithful! I’ll be satisfied for service done when you abandon the Halfway House and come over to the Left Wing!”
“Not likely!” answered Bertram. “I walk in the middle of the road.”