CHAPTER XXII—BEGINNINGS
1
THE day of sudden and dramatic peace was drawing near its close. Seated on the parapet of a rifle pit Betty and Brachey looked out over the red-brown valley. Long, faintly purple shadows lay along the hillside and in the deeper hollows. From the compound, half-way down the slope, a confusion of pleasant sounds came to their ears—youthful voices, snatches of song, an energetically whistled Sousa march, the quaintly plaintive whine of Chinese woodwinds—while above the roofs of tile and iron within the rectangle of wall (that was still topped with brown sand-bags) wisps of smoke drifted lazily upward.
“It seems queer,” mused he, aloud, “sitting here like this, with everything so peaceful. During the fighting I didn't feel nervous, but now I start at every new sound. I loathed it, too; but now, this evening, I miss it, in a way.” He gazed moodily down into the short trench. “Right there,” he said, “young Bartlett was hit.”
“And you brought him in under fire.”
“A Chinaman helped me.”
“Oh, it was you,” she said. “He wouldn't have done it. I watched from the window.” Her chin was propped on two small lists; her eyes, reflective, were looking out over the compound and the valley toward the walled temple on the opposite slope with its ornate, curving roofs and its little group of trees that were misty with young foliage. “I've been thinking a good deal about that, and some other things. All you said, back there on the ship, about independence and responsibility.”
“I don't believe I care to remember that,” said he quietly.