Bonsecours, having seen the look and movement of her lips, asked gently:
"Do you know him?"
"We grew up in the same town, back home," she answered, still gazing after Jeb.
"Oh!" he said. It was a gasp of pain, and he stood as though a shell had burst and stunned him. In his headlong work between guns of opposing armies, he had never stopped to wonder if there might be someone else in this Nurse Marian's life; and now, stung by a possible realization of it, his mind leaped outward to fears and fancied facts—all of which she might have told him were groundless. Turning toward the dug-out, he said briefly over his shoulder: "Please see to the children. My own cases are waiting."
Down into the trench Jeb had run, calling for an officer, and was soon making his report to the Colonel, who peremptorily asked:
"You can show us these positions?"
"Two of them, sir; the others must occupy the same general line."
Silently, but in the highest spirits, three thousand men went over the top, deploying in open order to make their drag-net stretch to its farthest capacity and sweep up the redoubts, whose locations, after all, were largely a matter of conjecture.
Jeb, fighting hard to hold himself steady, pressed toward the right, where he thought the first digging party could be found; yet, before he sighted it, firing broke out to his left, then farther to his left—each time with the unmistakable fusillade of machine-guns answered by cracking rifles. One bunch at a time, the enemy was being flushed from cover; yet at each new outburst he gasped more and more for air,—feeling in his soul what was coming over him, and swearing roundly to drive it back.
"We ain't going to miss anything, are we?" a cheery voice at his back called out.