"Don't forget.

Haven't you--a better friend ?" And with an instant, bold, and tantalizing grimace, she had vanished within.
* * * * * To his homeward march, her cicadas shrilled the music of fifes.

He, the despised, the man to spare, now cocked up his helmet like fortune's minion, dizzy with new honors.

Nobody had ever praised him to his face.
And now she, she of all the world, had spoken words which he feared and longed to believe, and which even said still less than her searching and mysterious look.
On the top of his exultation, he reached the nunnery, and entered his big, bare living-room, to find Heywood stretched in a wicker chair.
"Hallo, Rudie! I've asked myself to tiffin," drawled the lounger, from a little tempest of blue smoke, tossed by the punkah.

"How's the fair Bertha ?--Mausers all right?
And by the way, did you make that inventory of provisions ?" Rudolph faced him with a sudden conviction of guilt, of treachery to a leader.
"Yes," he stammered; "I--I'll get it for you." He passed into his bedroom, caught up the written list from a table, and for a moment stood as if dreaming.