Page:War; or, What happens when one loves one's enemy, John Luther Long, 1913.djvu/384

WAR not love! If Dave were alive and had a mind to return he must have done so long ago! If one loves does one stay away?"

"Why," she was smiling while I was compounding treason, "we have done everything else to get word to him, but, strangely enough, have never thought of printing his story and sending it into every corner of the earth. I think God himself sent you here to-day to put even greater peace, and more hope into our hearts."

"I trust so," said I cravenly.

"Perhaps God thinks we have expiated our sins," the woman went on joyously now, "and is ready with our reward. For we have waited fifty years! Fifty long, long years!"

Her voice broke and there was silence between us for a space.

Vonner's voice had been soft with the German of his ancestors. But Evelyn's caressed with the elisions of the South—which alien tongues could never quell. I fell to the 368