n the firing rippled along the
front, and the lawn became gray with smoke.

As he went down the stairs and into the garden he heard the soldiers
saying that the charge had been checked. The wounded were being
borne towards the barn, long lines of them, heads and limbs hanging
limp. A horse in the garden was ending a death-struggle among the
cucumber-frames, and the battery-men were cutting the traces to give
him free play. Upon the roof a thin column of smoke and sparks rose,
where a Prussian shell--the first as yet--had fallen and exploded
in the garret. Some soldiers were knocking the sparks from the roof
with the butts of their rifles.

When he went into the cellar again Lorraine was pacing restlessly
along the wine-bins.

"I cannot stay here," she said. "Jack, get some bottles of brandy
and come to the barn. The wounded will need them."

"You cannot go out. I will take them."

"No, I shall go."

"I ask you not to."

"Let me, Jack," she said, coming up to him--"with you."

He could not make her listen; she went with him, her slender arms
loaded with bottles. The shells were falling in the garden now;
one burst and flung a shower of earth and glass over them.

"Hurry!" he said. "Are you crazy, Lorraine, to come out into
this?"

"Don't scold, Jack," she whispered.

When she entered the stable he breathed more freely. He watched
her face narrowly, but she did not blanch at the sickening
spectacle of the surgeons' tables.

They placed their bottles of brandy along the side of a
box-stall, and stood together watching the file of wounded
passing in at the door.

"They do not need us here, yet," he said. "I wonder where Alixe
is?"

"There is a Sister of Mercy out on the skirmish-line across the
lawn," said a soldier of the hospital corps, pointing with bloody
hands towards the smoke-veiled river.

Jack looked at Lorraine in utter despair.

"I must go; she can't stay there," he muttered.

"Yes, you must go," repeated Lorraine. "She will be shot."

"Will you wait here?" he asked.

"Yes."

So he went away, thinking bitterly that she did not care whether
he lived or died--that she let him leave her without a word of
fear, of kindness. Then, for the first time, he realized that she
had never, after all, been touched by his devotion; that she had
never understood, nor cared to understand, his love for her. He
walked out across the smoky lawn, the din of the rifles in his
ears, the bitterness of death