g and reassuring him came into her
mind.

"It's all right, Bertram; it's all right!" she whispered. He returned
no answer, even of a flickering eyelash. He lay still, inert, a great
bulk that tugged at the muscles of her arms.

After a time, her frame adjusted itself to the position. Her
perceptions, still keenly alive, told her that her doctor was working
over a woman in the corner. Just as the train started, she saw him
rise, wipe his hands on his handkerchief, and motion calmly to two of
the men. They lifted the woman. Eleanor realized all at once what the
motion signified. They had taken her to join the dead in the baggage
car.

Next to Bertram lay an old man, his head so wrapped in bandages that
she could see only the tip of his grey beard. A middle-aged
woman--Eleanor recognized her as a camper whom they had passed on the
road but yesterday--knelt beside him, talking into his ear about his
soul. "Do you lean on your Savior?" she whispered. A kind of passing
impatience touched Eleanor. So much had her sympathetic spirit
absorbed the feelings of these dying ones, that she resented this as
an intrusion, an unwelcome distraction from the business of sloughing
off the flesh.

A little sag of Bertram's body, which alarmed her for a moment until
she saw that the movement came from relaxation of her own arms, called
her back to responsibility. The realization that it _had_ called her
back brought with it the amazing, shameful realization that it had
ever wandered away.

Why--

From the moment when she took him into her arms, she had never thought
of him as her dying lover--never as her lover at all!

A man in extremis, a thing so beaten and suffering that she called for
it on her Christ--he was all that, in common with the other beaten and
battered and senseless wrecks about them. But the feeling that he was
her own, about to go from her, had never entered her heart. She was
ashamed while she thought of it; but it persisted. Not hers? Why, she
had suffered him to kiss her only yesterday! Must she think of such
things with a life to save?

Now, her body was giving way with weariness; it seemed that she could
hold him no longer. She nodded to Judge Tiffany, therefore; the old
man rose and gently took her burden from her. She sank back on the
empty seat. When the faintness of fatigue had passed, she fixed her
eyes on the still face of him who had been her lover.

Why was it? The clear-cut profile, so refined and