“But you’ll go now, and fight for your country and—for me. You’ll come back covered with glory, I know you will.”
“Perhaps—and maybe I sha’n’t come back at all.”
“Then, I shall mourn my hero as a noble patriot, who never showed the white feather.”
“Oh, it isn’t courage that I lack. Give me a good fight, and I’m in it like anybody else. It’s the idea of carnage, and gaping wounds, and men shrieking in agony, gouging one another’s eyes out, and biting like wild-cats, with cold steel in their vitals—all over a quarrel in which they have no part.”
“Every man is a part of his nation, and the nation’s quarrel is his own.”
“We won’t argue it, darling. It’s settled now, and I’m going through with it. I start to-morrow. You’ll write to me often?”
“Every day.”
“If you don’t often get replies you’ll know it’s the fault of the army postal service—and perhaps my hatred of writing letters as well.”
“You certainly are a very bad letter-writer, Dick,” 86 she protested, with a laugh. “I’ve only had two notes from you, but those are very precious—precious as though written on leaves of gold.”
“You are sure, Dora, that you’re not sorry you engaged yourself to a useless person like me?”