nt unless she were the master-pilot. Her
cheeks were aflame with indignation, her body bending tensely forward
might have been a spring of steel set to release some instrument of
torture--and then she let the bolt descend like the wrath of furies.

With the smoke of shells sweeping over them, sometimes enveloping her
head and shoulders as though she were looking through a storm of anger,
she called on God to witness that he was a cringing coward. She stood
above him transformed into a superb though outraged figure of Liberty,
lashing him with words that at any other time her tongue would have
refused to speak; words, some of which she did not know the meaning but
had heard from the lips of suffering soldiers. Unconsciously she was
following the maxim of a famous officer who one day said to her that all
men are cowards somewhere, but brave everywhere if sufficiently
aroused; and now she brutally strove to bruise his soul, hysterically
telling herself that if it could be made to bleed it would become
purified.

Much of this, owing to her incoherence and the noise of battle--and,
perhaps, the chaotic tumult in his brain--was unheard; but some little
of it registered, for suddenly he turned upon his knees and stared at
her, as though his normal faculties were beginning to quicken. For half
a minute he stared. No words, no gestures, could have been as eloquent
as the look which burned from his pale, haggard face; it was as liquid
fire being poured upon the woman for whom he had once avowed a love, and
who now cursed him! The tableau, with its weird setting--her
condemnation as a whip of flame curled snake-like above his head--might
have been a picture put into life, and called "The Flagellation of a
Soul"! Then, clapping his hands to his ears, he bowed his head,
shrieking:

"Stop it! You hurt!"

"I intend to hurt," she cried down at him. "If you were in the Army
you'd be stood before the wall and shot for this!--maybe they'll do it
yet! Thank God, the people at home can't see you, you damnable coward!"
Yet with her next breath she was wailing to the torn world and tortured
air: "Tell me that I've lied! Oh, Jeb, tell me that I've lied!"

He pressed his face again into the powdered earth, and something about
his dogged attitude said that she was going too far. Her woman's
instinct sent this warning just in time, abruptly causing her to realize
that a self-esteem once crushed into complete abasement can never look
upon fe