No one answered. Words seemed the most impossible and absurd means of expression just then.
The German smiled at the look Sheila gave him, and the smile was arrogant. “You Americans have always made such a fuss over what you have been pleased to call our brutalities. What is war if it isn’t a consistent effort to exterminate the enemy? The women are the wives of the enemy and the breeders of more; the wounded are still the enemy—if they recover, they fight again. But a German knows how to honor a brave act. And when you go back, madam, you can tell how Carl Tiefmann, a German surgeon, wounded and taken prisoner, so far forgot his Prussian creed as to spare an enemy for a brave woman.”
He bowed and went back to the church doors. Sheila watched him go through a trailing of mist; then she dropped through the chief’s arms, unconscious, on the floor beside Peter’s stretcher.
The Germans never reached the little town, and by some merciful stroke of luck neither did any more of the shells. So it came to pass that on the 11th of November a very white nurse, holding fast to the hand of a man unconscious on a stretcher, followed Peace across the threshold of the American Military Hospital No. 10. It was days before Sheila spoke above a husky whisper or smiled, for it was days before Peter was out of danger, but there came a morning at last when a shaven and shorn Peter, looking oddly familiar, opened clear, sane eyes and saw the woman he loved bending close above him.
“He will require more care, better dressing”
He gave the same old cry that he had given ages before when he had come out of another nightmare of unconsciousness and fear, “It’s Leerie—why, it’s Leerie!”
And Sheila smiled down at him again with the old luminous smile.
When he was sufficiently mended to look about him and take reckoning of what had happened, he asked first for the ring that he had bought for that long-before wedding and that he had carried ever since with him. And he asked, second, for the chaplain.
Sheila drew the gold chain from about her neck and dangled the ring in front of his nose. “I took it when we cut off your coat that night, and I’ve kept it handy ever since. The chaplain’s handy, too. He’s promised—any hour of the day or night. Shall we send for him—now?”