form the very threshold of Paradise.

He saw Crystal more and more clearly every moment: now he was looking
straight into her blue eyes, and her little hand, cool and white as
snow, rested upon his burning forehead. She smiled on him--as on a
friend--there was no contempt, no harshness in her look--only a great,
consoling pity and something that seemed like an appeal!

Yes! the longer he himself looked into those blue eyes of hers, the more
sure he was that there was an appeal in them. It almost seemed as if she
needed him, in a way that she had never needed him before. Apparently
she could not speak: she could not tell him what it was she wanted: but
her little hands seemed to draw him up, out of the trodden, trampled
corn, and having soothed his aches and pains they seemed to impel him to
do something--that was important . . . and imperative . . . something
that she wanted done.

He begged her to let him lie here in peace, for he was now comforted and
happy. He was quite sure now that he was dead, that her sweet face had
been the last tangible vision which he had seen on earth, ere he closed
his eyes in the last long sleep.

He had seen her and she had gone. All of a sudden she had vanished, and
darkness was closing in around him: the scent of roses faded into the
air, which was now filled again with horrid sounds--the deafening roar
of cannon, the sharp and incessant retort of rifle-fire, the awesome
melee of cries and groans and bugle-calls and sighs of agony, and one
deafening cry--so like the last wail of departing souls--which came from
somewhere--not very far away: "Vive l'Empereur!"

Bobby raised himself to a sitting posture. His head ached terribly--he
was stiff in every limb: a burning, almost intolerable pain gnawed at
his thigh and at his left arm. But consciousness had returned and with
it all the knowledge of what this day had meant: all round him there was
the broken corn, stained with blood and mud, all round him lay the dead
and the dying in their thousands. Far away in the west a crimson glow
like fire lit up this vast hecatomb of brave lives sacrificed, this
final agony of the vast Empire, the might and grandeur of one man laid
low this day by the mightier hand of God.

It lit up with the weird light of the dying day the pallid, clean-shaven
faces of gallant British boys, the rugged faces of the Scot, the olive
skin of the child of Provence, the bronzed cheeks of old veterans: it
threw its l