t greatly
care for him. She married him rather than send him away empty-hearted
to the front, cold with disappointment, when it was in her power to arm
him with happiness. They parted on the day of the wedding. The soldier
went to France and was killed in his first fight. The girl grieved
because it had not been possible to love the man with her whole heart,
and because he had had no time (so she believed) to taste the joy she
had sacrificed herself to give. But the man, going into battle and
afterwards dying on the battlefield, was divinely happy and content. He
saw clearly that his love for her had been the great thing in his life,
its crown and its completion; that the thought of her as his wife was
worth being born for; that it made death only a night full of stars
with a promise of sunrise. The story did not end with the ending of the
soldier's life. The part before his death was no more than a prelude.
The real story was of the power of love upon the spirit of a man after
his passing, and his wish that the adored woman left behind might know
the vital influence of a few hours' happiness in shaping a soul to face
eternity. The book was supposed to be written in the first person, by
the man, and was in four parts. The first told of the courtship and
marrying; the second, of the man's going away from his wife-of-an-hour,
to the front, and his fall on the battlefield; the third described the
regret of the girl that she had not been able to give more, and her
resolve to atone by denying herself love if it came to her in future;
the fourth, the dead soldier's attempt to make her feel the truth; that
she was free of obligation because those few last hours had been a gift
of joy never to be taken from his soul.

Denin had dashed down a title on the first page of his manuscript
before beginning the book. There had seemed to him only one name for
it: "The War Wedding." Now that he came to read it all over, he still
had the feeling that something in him more powerful than himself had
done the writing; and suddenly he began to wish intensely that Barbara
might see the testament of his heart.

He wished this not because he was proud of his work, or thought it
superlatively good, but because he hoped that it might comfort her. She
had been strangely reserved with him, invariably baffling, almost
mysterious, during the latter half of their acquaintance, yet he had
felt that he knew the truth of her nature, deep down under the g