some one like him, I believe I could have made her
happy, kept her contented. But I realize fully that having met him
there could never be any other man for her but him. Her love for him
is like a flame, transforming her. I could never have called forth
such passion from her. I see clearly now how foolish it was in me to
have hoped it. There was nothing in the humdrum, commonplace brotherly
affection which she thought I gave her to arouse the romance which I
know slumbers under that calm, cold exterior of hers.

"Sometimes I query, too, whether my love for Margaret had that
flame-like quality which characterizes her love for her husband.
Margaret has always been so much a part of my life that my love for
her began I could not tell when, and grew and strengthened with the
years. There never has been any other woman but Margaret in my life.
Even if I should ever come out of this living hell, which I doubt, I
do not believe there ever will be another.

"And yet--"

"I have just been summoned for duty. Good-by, dear friend, until the
next time. Lovingly yours, Jack Bickett."

I laid the letter aside with a queer little startled feeling at my
heart.

Those two little words, "and yet," at the end of Jack's letter gave me
much food for thought. Was it possible that before his death Jack had
realized that his love for me was not the consuming passion he had
thought it, but partook more of the fraternal affection that I had had
for him?

I hoped for Jack's sake that this was so.

"And yet--"

I ran through the rest of the letters rapidly. One, the third from the
last, arrested my attention sharply.

"Such a pleasant thing happened to me today," Jack wrote, "one of the
unexpected gleams of sunlight that are so much brighter because of the
general gloom against which they are reflected.

"I was given a week's furlough last Saturday and went up to Paris with
my friend, Paul Caillard. He had a friend in a hospital on the way
there, headed by Dr. Braithwaite, the celebrated surgeon of Detroit."

I caught my breath. As well as if I had already read the words, I knew
what was coming.

"At an unexpected turn in the corridor I almost knocked over a
little nurse who was hurrying toward the office. She looked up at
me startled, out of the prettiest brown eyes I ever saw, and then
stopped, staring at me as if I had been a ghost. I stared back,
frankly, for her face was familiar to me, although for the moment I
could not te