"I knew that we were between the two armies, and that they drew together. I knew we were in danger, and that we could not stop there and rest!
"Though all those things were in my mind, they were in the background. They seemed to be affairs beyond our concern. Chiefly, I was thinking of my lady. An aching distress filled me. For the first time she had owned herself beaten and had fallen a-weeping. Behind me I could hear her sobbing, but I would not turn round to her because I knew she had need of weeping, and had held herself so far and so long for me. It was well, I thought, that she would weep and rest, and then we would toil on again, for I had no inkling of the thing that hung so near. Even now I can see her as she sat there, her lovely hair upon her shoulder, can mark again the deepening hollow of her cheek.
"'If we had parted,' she said, 'if I had let you go—'
"'No,' said I. 'Even now I do not repent. I will not repent; I made my choice, and I will hold on to the end.'
"And then—
"Overhead in the sky flashed something and burst, and all about us I heard the bullets making a noise like a handful of peas suddenly thrown. They chipped the stones about us, and whirled fragments from the bricks and passed..."
He put his hand to his mouth, and then moistened his lips.
"At the flash I had turned about...
"You know—she stood up—
"She stood up, you know, and moved a step towards me—