“Yes?”
“I—I’ve got to go away.... Only for a day or two,” he hastened to say. “It’s just a little trip.”
“When?”
“Now—to-night.”
“To-night?” Her tone was so strange, so startled, so shocked. “To-night?”
“Orders,” he said. “Nothing could take me away from you but orders.”
She had drawn away from him, and was striving to peer into his face, but the darkness prevented. She was striving to read from his eyes if he were telling the truth. She had feared his going—this young man from strange America. The possibility of his going had become a nightmare to her—always present in the profound recesses of her thoughts.
“Where?” she asked.
“To the front.”
“O-oh!...” It was not an exclamation, it was a suppressed cry. It was one of the things she had feared, that this young soldier would be sent from her to the hell of battle, and that he would not return, as the brothers and the husbands and the sweethearts of her acquaintances had gone—to be swallowed up and to be seen no more on earth.... He was going.... The thing was going to happen to her.... Her man—the man she loved—was going to become a sacrifice as those millions of other men had become sacrifices.