'I may never marry,' said Bella, with a curious ring in her voice.
'But you will think of me, Bella, won't you—broiling and fighting in far away Africa—won't you? I would not like to think that you quite forgot me.'
'Nor shall I,' said she, making a super-human effort to repress her tears.
'Good-bye.'
'Good-bye.'
He was gone—gone, and no kiss was exchanged between those two—only a clinging pressure of the hand, and that was all!
Could it be that, after all, he was no more to her—through her misconception and doubt of him—than a stick or a stone? If her assumed calm covered—as it really did—a sore, sore heart, how was he to know it?
With her hands interlaced above her head, as if to stay the throbbing of her brain, and her swelling eyes cast upward, she said, in a husky voice,
'If I have erred, oh! may heaven protect him, and make his life happy in some other way!'
However, she did not say with another.