confront the eager rush of the enemy. They felt the pride of their
onward movement when the remainder of the army seemed trying to dribble
down this road. They tumbled teams about with a fine feeling that it
was no matter so long as their column got to the front in time. This
importance made their faces grave and stern. And the backs of the
officers were very rigid.

As the youth looked at them the black weight of his woe returned to
him. He felt that he was regarding a procession of chosen beings. The
separation was as great to him as if they had marched with weapons of
flame and banners of sunlight. He could never be like them. He could
have wept in his longings.

He searched about in his mind for an adequate malediction for the
indefinite cause, the thing upon which men turn the words of final
blame. It--whatever it was--was responsible for him, he said. There
lay the fault.

The haste of the column to reach the battle seemed to the forlorn young
man to be something much finer than stout fighting. Heroes, he
thought, could find excuses in that long seething lane. They could
retire with perfect self-respect and make excuses to the stars.

He wondered what those men had eaten that they could be in such haste
to force their way to grim chances of death. As he watched his envy
grew until he thought that he wished to change lives with one of them.
He would have liked to have used a tremendous force, he said, throw off
himself and become a better. Swift pictures of himself, apart, yet in
himself, came to him--a blue desperate figure leading lurid charges
with one knee forward and a broken blade high--a blue, determined
figure standing before a crimson and steel assault, getting calmly
killed on a high place before the eyes of all. He thought of the
magnificent pathos of his dead body.

These thoughts uplifted him. He felt the quiver of war desire. In his
ears, he heard the ring of victory. He knew the frenzy of a rapid
successful charge. The music of the trampling feet, the sharp voices,
the clanking arms of the column near him made him soar on the red wings
of war. For a few moments he was sublime.

He thought that he was about to start for the front. Indeed, he saw a
picture of himself, dust-stained, haggard, panting, flying to the front
at the proper moment to seize and throttle the dark, leering witch of
calamity.

Then the difficulties of the thing began to drag at him. He hesitated,
bal