to her out of his sleep. But with its splendid advent there came the
other thing that always is born with woman's love--an almost pathetic
care of the being loved. In the deep love of women the maternal and
protective sense works in the parallels of mutual regard. In her life
now it sprang full-statured in action; love of him, care of him; his
honour her honour; his life her life. He must not sleep like this if it
was his duty to go on. Yet how utterly worn he must be! She had seen
men brought in from fighting prairie fires for three days without sleep;
had watched them drop on their beds, and lie like logs for thirty-six
hours. This sleep of her lover was, therefore, not so strange to her.
but it was perilous to the performance of his duty.

"Poor Sergeant Tom," she said. "Poor Tom," she added; and then, with a
great flutter at the heart at last, "My Tom!" Yes, she said that; but
she said it to the beacon, to the Prairie Star, burning outside brighter,
it seemed to her, than it had ever done be fore. Then she sat down and
watched him for many minutes, thinking at the end of each that she would
wake him. But the minutes passed, his breathing grew heavier, and he did
not stir. The Prairie Star made quivering and luminous curtains of red
for the windows, and Jen's mind was quivering in vivid waves of feeling
just the same. It seemed to her as if she was looking at life now
through an atmosphere charged with some rare, refining essence, and that
in it she stood exultingly. Perhaps she did not define it so; but that
which we define she felt. And happy are they who feel it, and, feeling
it, do not lose it in this world, and have the hope of carrying it into
the next.

After a time she rose, went over to him and touched his shoulder. It
seemed strange to her to do this thing. She drew back timidly from the
pleasant shock of a new experience. Then she remembered that he ought to