-and yes, it did
come back; but it was a thousand times higher and better love than it
had ever been, for everything came back and I was a better man. I have
seen nothing but your face all the time--nothing--nothing, all the time
I've been gone; and I couldn't rest or sleep--I couldn't even die,
Judith, until I had come to tell you that I never knew a man could love
a woman as--I--love--you--Judith. I----"

He rose very slowly, turned, and as he passed from the light, his
weakness got the better of him for the first time, because of his wounds
and sickness, and his voice broke in a half sob--the sob that is so
terrible to a woman's ears; and she saw him clinch his arms fiercely
around his breast to stifle it.

* * * * *

It was the old story that night--the story of the summer's heat and
horror and suffering--heard and seen, and keenly felt in his delirium:
the dusty, grimy days of drill on the hot sands of Tampa; the long,
long, hot wait on the transport in the harbour; the stuffy, ill-smelling
breath of the hold, when the wind was wrong; the march along the coast
and the grewsome life over and around him--buzzard and strange bird in
the air, and crab and snail and lizard and scorpion and hairy tarantula
scuttling through the tropical green rushes along the path. And the
hunger and thirst and heat and dirt and rolling sweat of the last day's
march and every detail of the day's fight; the stench of dead horse and
dead man; the shriek of shell and rattle of musketry and yell of
officer; the slow rush through the long grass, and the climb up the
hill. And always, he was tramping, tramping, tramping through long,
green, thick grass. Sometimes a kaleidoscope series of pictures would go
jumbling through his brain, as though some imp were unrolling the scroll
of his brain backward, forward, and sidewise; a whirling cloud of sand,
a driving sheet of visible bullets; a hose-pipe that shot streams of
melted steel; a forest of smokestacks; the flash of trailing
phosphorescent foam; a clear sky, full of stars--the mountains clear and
radiant through sunlit vapours; camp-fires shooting flames into the
darkness, and men and guns moving past them. Through it all he could
feel his legs moving and his feet tramping, tramping, tramping through
long green grass. Sometimes he was tramping toward the figure of a
woman, whose face looked like Judith's; and tramp as he could, he could
never get close enough