en place near those great temples at Paestum,
at last, on a blank stony place dotted with spiky bushes, empty and
desolate and so flat that a grove of eucalyptus far away showed to the
feet of its stems. How I can see it! My lady was sitting down under
a bush, resting a little, for she was very weak and weary, and I was
standing up watching to see if I could tell the distance of the firing
that came and went. They were still, you know, fighting far from each
other, with those terrible new weapons that had never before been used:
guns that would carry beyond sight, and aeroplanes that would do--What
THEY would do no man could foretell.

"I knew that we were between the two armies, and that they drew
together. I knew we were in danger, and that we could not stop there and
rest!

"Though all these things were in my mind, they were in the background.
They seemed to be affairs beyond our concern. Chiefly, I was thinking of
my lady. An aching distress filled me. For the first time she had owned
herself beaten and had fallen a-weeping. Behind me I could hear her
sobbing, but I would not turn round to her because I knew she had need
of weeping, and had held herself so far and so long for me. It was well,
I thought, that she would weep and rest and then we would toil on again,
for I had no inkling of the thing that hung so near. Even now I can see
her as she sat there, her lovely hair upon her shoulder, can mark again
the deepening hollow of her cheek.

"'If we had parted,' she said, 'if I had let you go.'

"'No,' said I. 'Even now, I do not repent. I will not repent; I made my
choice, and I will hold on to the end."

"And then--

"Overhead in the sky something flashed and burst, and all about us I
heard the bullets making a noise like a handful of peas suddenly thrown.
They chipped the stones about us, and whirled fragments from the bricks
and passed...."

He put his hand to his mouth, and then moistened his lips.

"At the flash I had turned about....

"You know--she stood up--

"She stood up; you know, and moved a step towards me--

"As though she wanted to reach me--

"And she had been shot through the heart."

He stopped and stared at me. I felt all that foolish incapacity an
Englishman feels on such occasions. I met his eyes for a moment, and
then stared out of the window. For a long space we kept silence. When at
last I looked at him he was sitting back in his corner, his arms folded,
and his teeth gnawing