He was silent a few moments. By this time the bandages had been removed from his face all but the eyes, and the girl's looks lingered on the features she still loved, but with a new tenderness. "I went for one or two reasons," he said. "I had a fierce sense of justice and I felt that the Belgians should be avenged. If I could help to do it I wanted to."
"I think that was very unselfish and noble," said Anita in a low tone.
"Oh, don't think it was altogether that," he replied quickly. "I think the chief reason was because I was most unhappy. I had lost the two whom I loved best in all the world, and life did not appear particularly desirable. I didn't care much whether I was knocked out by a German shell or not. I am afraid I didn't calculate on just this sort of thing happening, or I might not have been so ready to go."
"I am so sorry about those—those two you lost." Anita's voice trembled. "Do you—can you bear to tell me about them?"
"One was my mother," he said reverently. "She died a little over a year ago. I was in France when it happened, and I did not see her, for it was quite a sudden illness."
"Oh, I am so sorry, so sorry," Anita spoke with feeling, "I can——" she checked herself from saying that she could sympathize with him because of having gone through a similar experience, and went on to say, "I can imagine what a great grief that must have been. And the other loss?"
"Is something that I should get over and probably will do so in time. Indeed, I cannot see why I do not, but I suppose I am built that way. It is the girl in the case, perhaps you may have guessed. She threw me over, to speak plainly."
"How horrid," Anita gave a quick gasp.
"Well, perhaps that isn't exactly so. She was so young, so full of girlish fancies, and I was too hard and unyielding. Oh, I see now what I should have done. I saw it when it was too late. I don't excuse my part of it at all, yet as I was then my uppermost feeling at the time was indignation that she should doubt me. I was hurt to the quick that she should declare my love for her was a pretence. She gave me back her ring and I went off hot with despair and injured feelings. She was 'fire and dew and spirit;' I was a youth supreme in a belief in his own opinions. I couldn't see beyond a very limited horizon. I couldn't perceive her side at all. I was just out of college and you know, perhaps, the state of mind of the just graduated college boy."
"You didn't even think of going back and trying to make up?"