Plainly I could see that we
were being hemmed in; that the great net of that giant Warfare had
us in its toils. Many times we had seen the levies that had come
down from the north going to and fro, and had come upon them in the
distance amidst the mountains making ways for the ammunition and
preparing the mounting of the guns. Once we fancied they had fired
at us, taking us for spies--at any rate a shot had gone shuddering
over us. Several times we had hidden in woods from hovering
aeroplanes.

"But all these things do not matter now, these nights of
flight and pain . . . We were in an open place near those great
temples at Paestum, at last, on a blank stony place dotted with
spiky bushes, empty and desolate and so flat that a grove of
eucalyptus far away showed to the feet of its stems. How I can see
it! My lady was sitting down under a bush resting a little, for
she was very weak and weary, and I was standing up watching to see
if I could tell the distance of the firing that came and went.
They were still, you know, fighting far from each other, with those
terrible new weapons that had never before been used: guns that
would carry beyond sight, and aeroplanes that would do--What they
would do no man could foretell.

"I knew that we were between the two armies, and that they
drew together. I knew we were in danger, and that we could not
stop there and rest!

"Though all these things were in my mind, they were in the
background. They seemed to be affairs beyond our concern.
Chiefly, I was thinking of my lady. An aching distress filled me.
For the first time she had owned herself beaten and had fallen
a-weeping. Behind me I could hear her sobbing, but I would not
turn round to her because I knew she had need of weeping, and had
held herself so far and so long for me. It was well, I thought,
that she would weep and rest and then we would toil on again, for
I had no inkling of the thing that hung so near. Even now I can
see her as she sat there, her lovely hair upon her shoulder, can
mark again the deepening hollow of her cheek.

"'If we had parted,' she said, 'if I had let you go.'

"'No,' said I.' Even now, I do not repent. I will not repent;
I made my choice, and I will hold on to the end.'

"And then--

"Overhead in the sky flashed something and burst, and all
about us I heard the bullets making a noise like a handful of peas
suddenly thrown. They chipped the stones about us, and whirled
frag