“Why, that there are many wrong ways and but one right one, if we could only find it,” said Elfie.
“Yes, if we could only find it,” smiled Goldsborough; “but in the difficulty each must take the way he thinks to be the right way; and to him it will be the right way. Elfie, my darling, the days of intolerance are passing away. Religious intolerance is a thing of the past. Political intolerance and social intolerance will follow it into oblivion. Meanwhile—”
“Meanwhile, dear Albert, you are talking too much. Do not think it necessary to justify yourself to me. Let me stop all with this—” she said, stooping and pressing her lips to his. “I love you, Albert, I love you—I love you; that is the one thing I am surest of now. There, close your eyes and try to sleep, with my hand in yours, and my face near yours,” she murmured, dropping her head on the edge of his pillow.
He smiled, and with one hand clasped in hers, and the other laid lightly among the black tresses of her bended head, he closed his eyes, and tried to rest.
He was in that state of physical decline when conversation is not exciting but exhausting. He was very much exhausted, and he slept.
Even in that crowded ward they were, from their position, nearly isolated. The cot was in the corner, with a window at each angle; and their nearest neighbor was the young Union soldier who had lost his leg. The boy, from a sense of politeness, had turned his back upon them, and was occupying his attention with a newspaper.
Elfie’s patient slept, and Elfie never moved and scarcely breathed, lest she should disturb him.
How long the days in the hospital seemed. People came and went. A low hum of conversation prevailed.
Once Elfie was conscious that a consultation was going on by the bedside of a patient half way down the row of beds on the opposite side of the ward. And soon after she heard a little bustle of preparation, and she saw a procession like a funeral train bearing that patient on his mattress on a bier from the ward to the operating room.
The procession had to pass her to go out by the door at her end of the ward. And as it went by, she knew that another victim was about to lose a limb and, perhaps, his life also.