"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."