"No," he answered.
The doctor hurried away. The woman, attending to the sick man, asked Ian whom he sought.
"I don't know. A Jew brought me. Said a man here wanted somebody from Ruvno. I am from Ruvno."
"Ah! I remember now. One moment." Swiftly she completed her task and turned towards the north end of the tent. He followed her to a far corner, till she stopped before a bed which held one of the shrouded forms.
"Too late!" he cried.
She gave him a look of sympathy.
"He died a few minutes ago."
Unable to utter a word, he signed to her. Gently, she turned back the sheet. He stepped forward; all hatred, all bitterness, slipped from him like a cloak. Joseph was no more. He could marry Vanda.
This was his uppermost thought; his next, as he gazed at that familiar, yet transformed face, a deep relief that Roman had not suffered that death. Then came remorse for the speed of his thoughts towards marrying her this man had loved, and sharp pain that Destiny had taken him in such a way. He wanted Joseph to die fighting, as young men should in war-time, in the open, falling to God's good earth, whence they come, mingling their life's blood with the fountain of all life. That livid, emaciated face, with evil stains on the once healthy cheeks was a reproach to modernity, a seal upon the Cossack's cry of "murdered!"
For a long time he gazed and many an emotion rose and swelled in his heart; scenes of boyhood sprang up again; memories of the chase, of the life they once trod together, as dead for him now as was Joseph himself. And whilst he breathed a prayer for the dead which Father Constantine had taught them all, he thanked God that he had resisted the call of passion a few nights ago, when he sat and watched the summer moon, so sure it lighted Joseph's body on the battlefield. Now, at least, he could look on his remains without remorse for evil action.