A stifled sob startled him. He groped quickly for his comrade, and found her lying prone, her face buried in her arms. He drew her close and held her as he might have held a child. After all, she was scarcely more than that—a child, delicate and sensitive. As a child might, she pillowed her head upon his breast and lay there sobbing softly.
But the sobs ceased presently; he could feel how she struggled for self-control; and at last she turned in his arms and lay staring up at the heavens.
“That’s right,” he said. “Look up at the stars! That helps!” and it seemed to him, in spite of the tramp of feet and the rattle of wheels and curses of savage drivers, that they were alone together in the midst of things, and that nothing else mattered.
“How sublime they are!” she whispered. “How they calm and strengthen one! They seem to understand!” She turned her face and looked at him. “You too have understood!” she said, very softly; then gently disengaged his arms and sat erect.
“Do you know,” said Stewart, slowly, “what we saw back there has revived my faith in human nature—and it needed reviving! Those men must have seen that that scoundrel was a soldier like themselves, yet they didn’t hesitate to shoot. Justice still lives, then; a sense of decency can survive, even in an army. I had begun to doubt it, and I am glad to know that I was wrong.”
“The tenderest, noblest gentleman I ever knew,” she answered, softly, “was a soldier.”
“Yes,” Stewart agreed; “I have known one or two like that.”
War was not wholly bad, then. Its fierce flame blasted, blackened, tortured—but it also refined. It had its brutal lusts—but it had also its high heroisms!
The girl at his side stirred suddenly.
“We must be going,” she said.