“Let me look at you,” said Betty, lifting her wet face. “It has been so long, and I have wanted you so much—I have hungered sleeping and waking.”
“Don't look at me, Betty, I am a skeleton—a crippled skeleton, and I will not be looked at by my love.”
“Your love can see you with shut eyes. Oh, my best and dearest, do you think you could keep me from seeing you however hard you tried? Why, there's a lamp in my heart that lets me look at you even in the night.”
“Your lamp flatters, I am afraid to face it. Has it shown you this?”
He drew back and held up his maimed hand, his eyes fastened upon her face, where the old fervour had returned.
With a sob that thrilled through him, she caught his hand to her lips and then held it to her bosom, crooning over it little broken sounds of love and pity. Through the spreading beech above a clear gold light filtered down upon her, and a single yellow leaf was caught in her loosened hair. He saw her face, impassioned, glorified, amid a flood of sunshine.
“And I did not know,” she said breathlessly. “You were wounded and there was no one to tell me. Whenever there has been a battle I have sat very still and shut my eyes, and tried to make myself go straight to you. I have seen the smoke and heard the shots, and yet when it came I did not know it. I may even have laughed and talked and eaten a stupid dinner while you were suffering. Now I shall never smile again until I have you safe.”
“But if I were dying I should want to see you smiling. Nobody ever smiled before you, Betty.”
“If you are wounded, you will send for me. Promise me; I beg you on my knees. You will send for me; say it or I shall be always wretched. Do you want to kill me, Dan? Promise.”
“I shall send for you. There, will that do? It would be almost worth dying to have you come to me. Would you kiss me then, I wonder?”