At
sight of the soiled and haggard man before her, her blue eyes had
lighted with something far more than pleased surprise. His appearing
had been quite unexpected; her meeting with him had been the naked
impulse of her girlish heart. And, all that endless day, her grief
for the Captain had in no way hidden her evident pleasure in his own
presence. And then, all at once, had come the end, unexpected and
hence doubly crushing. His young, newborn happiness was as little
strong to bear the blow as were his exhausted body and his shattered
nerve. Like a wild beast wounded to the death, he had crept silently
away, to go through his agony, unseen.
Standing under the fierce glare of the electric light by the
hospital gate, his appearance would wellnigh have baffled the
recognition of his mother. Soiled and stained and tattered, his head
sunk between his shoulders, he looked a feeble man of middle years.
Dark shadows lay around his heavy gray eyes, and the corners of his
mouth drooped pitifully. And, somewhere inside that building, was
the girl who had snatched away from him what was dearer than life
itself. For six long months she had been the incentive to all of his
best work; it had been her influence which finally had led him to
come back into the firing line; it had been in the hope for the
future, a hope growing less and less vague as the months passed by,
that he had been willing and glad to prolong his stay through one
more torrid African summer.
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