"Come back!—Jeb!—your unit!"
But she might have made the men on Mars hear as easily. Once she started to run after him, yet the fruitlessness of such a chase—and, more important still, the unconscious soldier's claim for aid—checked her. Blinded by tears, she dashed up the road and down to the quadrangle, staggered into the dug-out, and cried in a strange voice to Bonsecours:
"There's a man out there I can't bring in!"
He sprang up as if electrified. But her words had not alarmed him so much as her appearance and, in desperation catching her by the shoulders, he demanded:
"What has happened—tell me!"
"N—nothing," she sank upon the box, burying her face in her folded arms. She was sobbing hysterically now, and nurses rarely did this—until they snapped!
"Tell me!—tell me!" he cried, leaning over her, and fighting as he had never fought to keep from holding her close to him. His heart had been too nearly starved, his strength too nearly exhausted, to withstand a scene like this. "If you pity me, tell me what has happened," he implored.
She did not look up, but impulsively reached for one of his hands and pressed it fiercely, almost savagely, against her cheek. This must have been the comfort she needed, this touch of a man who was every inch a man, because the sobs at once grew quiet; and, in full control of her nerves, she arose, saying urgently:
"Quick! He's on the trench bridge!"