Page:The Clansman (1905).djvu/150

 They passed a camp of soldiers and then a big hospital on the banks above. A gun flashed from the hill, and the flag dropped from its staff.

The girl's eyes lingered on the flower in his coat a moment and then on the red scar in the edge of his dark hair, and somehow the difference between them seemed to melt into the falling twilight. Only his nearness was real. Again a strange joy held her.

He threw her a look of tenderness, and she began to tremble. A sea-gull poised a moment above them and broke into a laugh.

Bending nearer, he gently took her hand, and said:

"I love you!"

A sob caught her breath and she buried her face on her arm.

"I am for you, and you are for me. Why beat your wings against the thing that is and must be? What else matters? With all my sins and faults my land is yours—a land of sunshine, eternal harvests, and everlasting song, old-fashioned and provincial perhaps, but kind and hospitable. Around its humblest cottage song-birds live and mate and nest and never leave. The winged ones of your own cold fields have heard their call, and the sky to-night will echo with their chatter as they hurry Southward. Elsie, my own, I too have called—come; I love you!"

She lifted her face to him full of tender spiritual charm, her eyes burning their passionate answer.

He bent and kissed her.

"Say it! Say it!" he whispered.

"I love you!" she sighed.