would not turn round to her because I knew she had need of weeping, and had held herself so far and so long for me. It was well, I thought, that she would weep and rest, and then we would toil on again, for I had no inkling of the thing that hung so near. Even now I can see her as she sat there, her lovely hair upon her shoulder, can mark again the deepening hollow of her cheek.
"'If we had parted,' she said, 'if I had let you go———'
"'No,' said I. 'Even now I do not repent. I will not repent; I made my choice and I will hold on to the end.'
"And then———
"Overhead in the sky flashed something and burst, and all about us I heard the bullets making a noise like a handful of peas suddenly thrown. They chipped the stones about us, and whirled fragments from the bricks and passed. . . ."
He put his hand to his mouth, and then moistened his lips.
"At the flash I had turned about. . . .
"You know—she stood up———
"She stood up, you know, and moved a step towards me———
"As though she wanted to reach me———
"And she had been shot through the heart."
He stopped and stared at me. I felt all that foolish incapacity an Englishman feels on such occasions. I met his eyes for a moment, and then stared out of the window. For a long space we kept silence. When at last I looked at him he was sitting back in
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