How many times he had sung it in France!—jolting along muddy, endless roads, heartsick, homesick.
"There's a long, long night of waiting
Until my dreams all come true,
Till the day when I'll be going
Down that long, long trail with you."
What had "you" meant to him then? A girl—a pretty girl, of course; but any girl. And now?
Ah, now he knew what he had been going toward, not only on those terrible roads in France, but all through the years of his life. An exquisite, imperious little officer's girl with divinely compassionate eyes, who wasn't ashamed to dance with a private, and who had let him hold her hand at parting while she said in accents an angel might have envied, "Good-by, Soldier Boy."
Quin sighed profoundly and slipped his arm under his head, and at the same moment the owner of the knee upon which he was leaning also heaved a sigh and shifted her position, and somehow in the adjustment two lonely hands came in contact and evidently decided that, after all, substitutes were some comfort.
It was not until all the whistles in town had announced the birth of the New Year that the party broke up, and it was not until then that Quin realized that he was very tired, and that his pulse was behaving in a way that was, alas, all too familiar.