im that letter merely from a fine friendly patronage. All right,
of course, from her standpoint, but from his, gall and wormwood to his
proud spirit. Oh, that he had not answered it! He might have known! He
should have remembered that she had never been in his class. Not that his
people were not as good as hers, and maybe better, so far as intellectual
attainments were concerned; but his had lost their money, had lived a
quiet life, and in her eyes and the eyes of her family were very likely
as the mere dust of the earth. And now, just now when war had set its
seal of sacrifice upon all young men in uniform, he as a soldier had
risen to a kind of deified class set apart for hero worship, nothing
more. It was not her fault that she had been brought up that way, and
that he seemed so to her, and nothing more. She had shown her beautiful
spirit in giving him the tribute that seemed worthiest to her view. He
would not blame her, nor despise her, but he would hold himself aloof as
he had done in the past, and show her that he wanted no favors, no
patronage. He was sufficient to himself. What galled him most was to
think that perhaps in the intimacy of their engagement she might show his
letter to Wainwright, and they would laugh together over him, a poor
soldier, presuming to write as he had done to a girl in her station. They
would laugh together, half pitifully--at least the woman would be
pitiful, the man was likely to sneer. He could see his hateful mustache
curl now with scorn and his little eyes twinkle. And he would tell her
all the lies he had tried to put upon him in the past. He would give her
a wrong idea of his character. He would rejoice and triumph to do so! Oh,
the bitterness of it! It overwhelmed him so that the little matter of
getting into his bunk without being seen by the officer in charge was
utterly overlooked by him.

Perhaps some good angel arranged the way for him so that he was able to
slip past the guards without being challenged. Two of the guards were
talking at the corner of the barracks with their backs to him at the
particular second when he came in sight. A minute later they turned back
to their monotonous march and the shadow of the vanishing corporal had
just disappeared from among the other dark shadows of the night
landscape. Inside the barracks another guard welcomed him eagerly without
questioning his presence there at that hour:

"Say, Cam, how about day after to-morrow? Are you free?