Here is a part of the thing that people say they do not understand.
It seems as if his wife might have had him moved out of the common ward. It is a little dreadful to think of him there, who had always been used to so much luxury—among the grey blankets, the coarse grey sheets, the beds and stretcher-beds crowded together, a bottle of the hospital champagne on the night-table, the black man in the next bed screaming. She might, it would seem, have had in their own doctor, or any one of the big doctors. She surely might have got permission to stay in the ward and sit by him the night he died.
He died the night after the operation. They had amputated too late. It was only the third day that the chief saw him. They amputated next morning, and he died in the night.
In that hospital they do not put a screen about the bed of one who dies.
If only some one had done something while there was time. It seems such a sad waste of a life, and such a dreary end. You see he had had no glory. It was for bringing up the comrades' soup that he had died. There were no medals to be left after him, with his blue coat and his cap. I suppose there was just one of those coarse grey sheets drawn up over him till they carried him out of the ward.
Some people say he did not want to live. But then he was probably too ill to concern himself much about anything. Some people say his wife did not want him to live. But then she may have been too confused and stunned to be able to concern herself about anything. Some people say she loved another man, and some people say he loved another woman.
Well, from him no one will ever know. It appears also as if no one were likely ever to know from her.
And now, no one sees her or hears from her any more.
His mother, who for a time would not speak of her, says now only that her devotion in the typhus hospital is wonderful, and her self-sacrifice; that she renders incalculable service there, and is above all praise.
That much is true.