"But he carried you over the stream."
Her eyes flashed a question, then blazed. "There, you've come back to
it," she said. "What makes you?"
"Because I wanted to carry you myself."
"Silly," she said; "any man could carry me across the stream--but only
you could write that chapter in the middle of the book."
"You liked it?" he cried, radiantly.
"Like it?" she asked. "I read it once, and then I read it again--on my
knees."
Her voice seemed to drop away breathless. Behind them Otto Brand
tramped, whistling; but he might have been a tree, or the sky, or the
distant hills, for all the thought they took of him.
"I wanted to beg your pardon," the girl went on, "for what I said the
other day--it is a great thing to write a book like that--greater than
fighting a battle or saving a life, for it saves people's ideals;
perhaps in that way it saves their souls."
"Then I may sleep in the canopy bed?" His voice was calm, but inwardly
he was much shaken by her emotion.
Her eyes, as she turned to him, had in them the dawn of that for which
he had hoped.
"Why not?" she said, quickly. "You are greater than your
grandfather--you are--" She stopped and laughed a little, and, in this
moment of her surrender, her beauty shone like a star.
"Oh, little great man," she said, tremulously, "your head touches the
skies!"