t beside myself to see him standing close by me
in the flesh. I got down from my scaffolding as soon as I could, and all
thoughts else were soon drowned in the joy of having him by me; Margaret,
too, how glad she must have been, for she had been betrothed to him for
some time before he went to the wars, and he had been five years away;
five years! and how we had thought of him through those many weary days!
how often his face had come before me! his brave, honest face, the most
beautiful among all the faces of men and women I have ever seen. Yes, I
remember how five years ago I held his hand as we came together out of
the cathedral of that great, far-off city, whose name I forget now; and
then I remember the stamping of the horses' feet; I remember how his hand
left mine at last, and then, some one looking back at me earnestly as
they all rode on together--looking back, with his hand on the saddle
behind him, while the trumpets sang in long solemn peals as they all rode
on together, with the glimmer of arms and the fluttering of banners, and
the clinking of the rings of the mail, that sounded like the falling of
many drops of water into the deep, still waters of some pool that the
rocks nearly meet over; and the gleam and flash of the swords, and the
glimmer of the lance-heads and the flutter of the rippled banners that
streamed out from them, swept past me, and were gone, and they seemed
like a pageant in a dream, whose meaning we know not; and those sounds
too, the trumpets, and the clink of the mail, and the thunder of the
horse-hoofs, they seemed dream-like too--and it was all like a dream that
he should leave me, for we had said that we should always be together;
but he went away, and now he is come back again.

We were by his bed-side, Margaret and I; I stood and leaned over him, and
my hair fell sideways over my face and touched his face; Margaret kneeled
beside me, quivering in every limb, not with pain, I think, but rather
shaken by a passion of earnest prayer. After some time (I know not how
long), I looked up from his face to the window underneath which he lay; I
do not know what time of the day it was, but I know that it was a
glorious autumn day, a day soft with melting, golden haze: a vine and a
rose grew together, and trailed half across the window, so that I could
not see much of the beautiful blue sky, and nothing of town or country
beyond; the vine leaves were touched with red here and there, and thre