"Do you remember the first word you ever spoke to me?"
"Yes, I do."
"And—you asked me to come and see you."
"Who wouldn't ask you—little rosebud?"
But Letty only sighed and closed her eyes; nor did she awaken when
Ailsa cautiously withdrew her arm and slipped out of bed.
She still had an hour and more; she decided to dress and go out for a breath of fresh, sweet air to fortify her against the heavy atmosphere of the sick wards.
It was not yet perfectly dark; the thin edge of the new moon traced a pale curve in the western sky; frogs were trilling; a night-bird sang in a laurel thicket unceasingly.
The evening was still, but the quiet was only comparative because, always, all around her, the stirring and murmur of the vast army never entirely ended.
But the drums and bugles, answering one another from hill to hill, from valley to valley, had ceased; she saw the reddening embers of thousands of camp fires through the dusk; every hill was jewelled, every valley gemmed.
In the darkness she could hear the ground vibrate under the steady tread of a column of infantry passing, but she could not see them—could distinguish no motion against the black background of the woods.