“For Heaven’s sake, Forge, old man—what’s the trouble? You’ve been groaning horribly the last five hours. It’s almost more than a fellow can stand, to hear you.”
“It’s all that coffee I drank,” apologized Nat. “I shouldn’t have taken so much. I’m sorry!”
But it was not the coffee.
CHAPTER XIV
SUNSHINE GLORIOUS
I
But Nathan had one more terrific experience to suffer before he was finished with the Russian bedlam,—an experience and an aftermath beside which all that has gone before—everything!—pales into insignificance and becomes as nothing. And like most stupendous experiences in life, it came when least expected, certainly unannounced.
Nathan reached that great tenth day of October, 1918.
“It was the turning point—the hinge!—of my whole life, Bill,” he has said to me since. “I wouldn’t have missed it for a million dollars, but whether I’d take a million dollars to go through with it again—it’s a question, Bill—it’s a question!”