"Please--please--" she whispered, "give it back to me--if you are a--soldier.... You can go to the door and call them.... Nobody will know.... You can turn your back.... It will only take a second!"

A big blue-bottle fly came blundering into the room and filled the silence with its noise. Years ago the big blue flies sometimes came into the quiet schoolroom; and how everybody giggled when the taller Miss Poucher, bristling from her prunella shoes to her stiff side-curls, charged indignantly upon the buzzing intruder.

Dry--eyed, dry--lipped, the Messenger straightened up, quivering, and drew a quick, sharp breath; then her head fell forward, and, resting inert upon the table, she buried her face in her arms. The most dangerous spy in the Union service--the secret agent who had worked more evil to the Confederacy than any single Union army corps--the coolest, most resourceful, most trusted messenger on either side as long as the struggle lasted--caught at last.

The man, young, Southern, and a gentleman's son, sat staring at her. He had driven his finger-nails deep into his palms, bitten his underlip till it was raw.

"Messenger!"

She made no response.

"Are you afraid?"

Her head, prone in her arms, motioned dull negation. It was a lie and he knew it. He looked at the slender column of the neck--stained to a delicate amber--at the nape; and he thought of the rope and the knot under the left ear.

"Messenger," he said once more. "I did not know it was _you_ I was to meet. Look at me, in God's name!"

She opened her eyes on him, then raised her head.

"Do you know me now?" he asked.

"No."

"Look!"

He touched the scar on his forehead; but there was no recognition in her eyes.

"Look, I tell you!" he repeated, almost fiercely.

She said wearily: "I have seen so many men--so many men.... I can't remember you."

"And I have seen many women, Messenger; but I have never forgotten you--or what you did--or what you did----"

"I?"

"You.... And from that night I have lived only to find you again.

And--oh, God! To find you here! My Messenger! My little Messenger!"

"Who are you?" she whispered, leaning forward on the table, dark eyes dilating with hope.

He sat heavily for a while, head bowed as though stunned to silence; then slowly the white misery returned to his face and he looked up.

"So--after all--_you_ have forgotten. And my romance is dead."

She did not answer, intent now on every word, every shade of his expression. And, as she looked, through the numbness of her desperation, hope stirred again, stealthily.

"Are you a friend?" Her voice scarcely sounded at all.

"Friends die for each other," he said. "Do you expect that of me?"

The silence between them became terrible; and at last he broke it with a bitter laugh:

"You once turned a boy's life to romance--riding through it--out of it--leaving scars on his brow and heart--and on his lips the touch of your own. And on his face your tears. Look at me once more!"

Her breath came quicker; far within her somewhere memory awoke, groping blindly for light.

"Three days we followed you," he said. "On the Pennsylvania line we cornered you; but you changed garb and shape and speech, almost under our eyes--as a chameleon changes color, matching the leaf it hides on.... I halted at that squatter's house--sure of you at last--and the pretty squatter's daughter cooked for us while we hunted you in the hills--and when I returned she gave me her bed to sleep on----"

Her hand caught at her throat and she half rose, staring at him.

"Her own bed to sleep on," he repeated. "And I had been three days in the saddle; and I ate what she set before me, and slept on her bed--fell asleep--only a tired boy, not a soldier any longer....

And awoke to meet your startled eyes--to meet the blow from your revolver butt that made this scar--to fall back bewildered for a moment--half-stunned--Messenger! Do you know me now?"

"Yes," she said.

They looked breathlessly at one another; suddenly a hot blush covered her neck and face; and his eyes flashed triumph.

"You have _not_ forgotten!" he cried.

And there, on the very edge of death itself, the bright shame glowed and glowed in her cheeks, and her distressed eyes fell before his.

"You kissed me," he said, looking at her.

"I--I thought I had--killed you--" she stammered.

"And you kissed me on the lips.... In that moment of peril you waited to do that. Your tears fell on my face. I felt them. And I tell you that, even had I been lying there dead instead of partly stunned, I would have known what you did to me after you struck me down."

Her head sank lower; the color ran riot from throat to brow.

He spoke again, quietly, yet a strange undertone of exaltation thrilled his voice and transfigured the thin, war-worn features she had forgotten, so that, as she lifted her eyes to him again, the same boy looked back at her from the mist of the long dead years.

"Messenger," he said, "I have never forgotten. And now it is too late to forget your tears on my face--the touch of your lips on mine. I would not if I could.... It was worth living for--dying for.... Once--I hoped--some day--after this--all this trouble ended--my romance might come--true----"

The boy choked, then:

"I came here under orders to take a woman spy whose password was the key to a Latin phrase. But until you stood straight in your rags and smiled at me, I did not know it was you--I did not know I was to take the Special Messenger! Do you believe me?"

"Yes."

The boy colored painfully. Then a queer, pallid change came over his face; he rose, bent over her where she rested heavily on the table:

"Little Messenger," he said, "I am in your debt for two blows and a kiss."

She lifted a dazed face to meet his gaze; he trembled, leaned down, and kissed her on the mouth.

Then in one bound he was at the door, signaling his troopers with drawn sabre--as once, long ago, she had seen him signal them in the Northern woods.

And, through the window, she saw the scattered cavalry forming column at a gallop, obeying every sabre signal, trotting forward, wheeling fours right--and then--and then! the gray column swung into the western forest at a canter, and was gone!