t and arms; they glistened like marble
tinged with rose in the pale forest dawn. The little scrupulous
ablutions finished, she dried her face on the fine cambric of the
under-sleeve, she dried her little ears, her brightening eyes,
the pink palms of her hand, and every polished finger separately
from the delicate flushed tip to the wrist, blue-veined and
slender. She shook out her heavy hair, heavy and gleaming with
burnished threads, and bound it tighter. She mended the broken
points of her bodice, then laced it firmly till it pressed and
warmed her fragrant breast. Then she rose.

There was nothing of fear or sorrow in her splendid eyes; her
mouth was moist and scarlet, her curved cheeks pure as a child's.

For a moment she stood pensive, her face now grave, now
sensitive, now touched with that mysterious exaltation that glows
through the histories of the saints, that shines from tapestries,
that hides in the dim faces carved on shrines.

For the world was trembling and the land cried out under the
scourge, and she was ready now for what must be. The land would
call her where she was awaited; the time, the hour, the place had
been decreed. She was ready--and where was the bitterness of
death, when she could face it with the man she loved.

Loved? At the thought her knees trembled under her with the
weight of this love; faint with its mystery and sweetness, her
soul turned in its innocence to God. And for the first time in
her child's life she understood that God lived.

She understood now that the sadness of life was gone forever.
There was no loneliness now for soul or heart; nothing to fear,
nothing to regret. Her life was complete. Death seemed an
incident. If it came to her or to the man she loved, they would
wait for one another a little while--that was all.

A pale sunbeam stole across the tree-tops. She looked up. A
little bird sang, head tilted towards the blue. She moved softly
up the slope, her hair glistening in the early sun, her blue eyes
dreaming; and when she came to the sleeping man she bent beside
him and held a cup of sweet water to his lips.

About noon they spoke of hunger, timidly, lest either might think
the other complained. Her head close against his, her warm arms
tight around his neck, she told him of the boy soldier, the
dreadful journey in the night, the terror, and the awakening. She
told him of the birth of her love for him--how death no longer
was to be feared or sought. She to