onless sleeper in the
shadows of the closing day. She was alone with him--alone as never
before. He would neither question nor make answer. Strange thoughts came
into her mind, disturbing, novel. How could he sleep without a pillow? It
must be an army habit after tent-less nights of exhaustion in the deadly
trenches. People--men--had tried to kill this living silent thing before
her; and he too--he too had wanted to kill. She wondered at that as with
the motion of a will-less automaton she drew nearer step by step. Her
feet unwatched struck the half-filled game-bag. She stumbled, caught her
breath, and had a moment of fear as she hung the bag on the wooden hook
upon which as a child she used to hang her sun-bonnet.

Then again some natural yearning moved her, and unresisting as in a dream
she drew still nearer--merely a woman in an unguarded moment once again
under the control of a great passion which knew no social rule of conduct
nor the maiden modesties of a serenely dutiful life. At each approach,
she stood still, unashamed, innocent of guile, thrilling with emotion
which before in quiet hours had been felt as no more disturbing than the
wandering little breezes which scarcely stir the leafage of the young
spring. She stood still until she won bodily mastery of this stormy
influence with its faintly conveyed sense of maiden terror. Her thoughts
wandered as she looked down on the sleeper. In voiceless self-whispered
speech she said, "Ah me! he used to be so vexed when I said he was too
young to ask me--a woman--to marry him. How young he looks now!" The
wounded arm forever crippled lay across his breast. She caught her
breath. "I wonder," she thought, "if we get younger in sleep--and then
age in the daytime. Good Heavens! he is smiling like a baby. Oh! but I
should like to know what he is thinking of." There was unresisted
fascination in the little drama of passionate love so long repressed.

She knelt beside him, saw the one great beauty of the hardy bronzed
face, the mouth now relaxed, with the perfect lip lines of a young
Antinous. She bent over him intent, reading his face as a child reads
some forbidden book, reading it feature by feature as a woman reads
for the first time with understanding a passionate love-poem. Ah, if he
would but open his eyes and then sleep again and never know. He moved,
and she drew back ready for flight, shy and startled. And now he was
quiet. "I must--I must," she murmured. "His lips?