It was so good to have him able to talk to her rationally after those long hours of fighting.
"Because I am yours ?" he repeated, puzzling over her words.
"Yes," she returned, with a hint of determined proprietorship in her voice; "because you belong to me.

You see, that eddy where your boat landed is my property, and so anything that drifts down the river and lodges there belongs to me.

Whatever the river brings to me, is mine.
The river brought you, and so--" She finished with another laugh,--a laugh that was filled with tender mother-yearning.
The blue eyes smiled back at her for a moment; then she saw them darken with painful memories.
"Oh, yes; the river," he said.

"I wanted the river to do something for me, and--and it did something quite different from what I wanted." "Of course," she returned, eagerly, "the river is always like that.

It always does the thing you don't expect it to do.