Page:War; or, What happens when one loves one's enemy, John Luther Long, 1913.djvu/226

WAR changed in a minute, and just held her and looked in her face without a word, till her head drooped, and her shoulders shook, and she cried like a baby.

"Now, we're all right," smiles Dave, "because we're all wrong and sorry for it," and puts his arm about her and leads her out under the plums.

And, presently, we could hear them—talking. Once in a while something came through:

"Yes, oh, my dear Dave, once I used to be crazy about the South. I love it still, of course—just as you love your own country. Till you came. Then there was nothing but you. To-night, Dave, it wasn't that—my Southern sympathies. That's all gone. It was you—in awful peril—that was it."

"Of what?" asks Dave.

"I can't tell you—I can't tell you!"

"Because you don't know," laughs Dave. "Same way with me. I can't tell what I don't know. None of us know. Maybe it's nothing."

"No, Dave, we're ruined—me—you—daddy—Jon!" 210