h his
clean-shaven face and slim figure. The manly eyes and the strong voice
satisfied her, and his preoccupation with some unexpected details of
duty flattered her. Other girls were weeping and bemoaning themselves,
but she felt a sort of noble distinction in the abstraction, the almost
unconsciousness, with which they parted. Only at the last moment he
said: "Don't forget my mother. It mayn't be such a walk-over as I
supposed," and he laughed at the notion.

He waved his hand to her as the train moved off--she knew it among a
score of hands that were waved to other girls from the platform of the
car, for it held a letter which she knew was hers. Then he went inside
the car to read it, doubtless, and she did not see him again. But she
felt safe for him through the strength of what she called her love. What
she called her God, always speaking the name in a deep voice and with
the implication of a mutual understanding, would watch over him and keep
him and bring him back to her. If with an empty sleeve, then he should
have three arms instead of two, for both of hers should be his for life.
She did not see, though, why she should always be thinking of the arm
his father had lost.

There were not many letters from him, but they were such as she could
have wished, and she put her whole strength into making hers such as she
imagined he could have wished, glorifying and supporting him. She wrote
to his mother glorifying him as their hero, but the brief answer she got
was merely to the effect that Mrs. Gearson was not well enough to write
herself, and thanking her for her letter by the hand of some one who
called herself "Yrs truly, Mrs. W.J. Andrews."

Editha determined not to be hurt, but to write again quite as if the
answer had been all she expected. Before it seemed as if she could have
written, there came news of the first skirmish, and in the list of the
killed, which was telegraphed as a trifling loss on our side, was
Gearson's name. There was a frantic time of trying to make out that it
might be, must be, some other Gearson; but the name and the company and
the regiment and the State were too definitely given.

Then there was a lapse into depths out of which it seemed as if she
never could rise again; then a lift into clouds far above all grief,
black clouds, that blotted out the sun, but where she soared with him,
with George--George! She had the fever that she expected of herself, but
she did not die in it; she