He lay still, in a kind of dream of anguish. His thirst seemed to have
separated itself from him, and to stand apart, a single demand. Then
the pain he felt was another single self. Then there was the clog of his
body, another separate thing. He was divided among all kinds of separate
beings. There was some strange, agonized connection between them, but
they were drawing further apart. Then they would all split. The sun,
drilling down on him, was drilling through the bond. Then they would
all fall, fall through the everasting lapse of space. Then again, his
consciousness reasserted itself. He roused on to his elbow and stared
at the gleaming mountains. There they ranked, all still and wonderful
between earth and heaven. He stared till his eyes went black, and the
mountains, as they stood in their beauty, so clean and cool, seemed to
have it, that which was lost in him.

IV

When the soldiers found him, three hours later, he was lying with his
face over his arm, his black hair giving off heat under the sun. But he
was still alive. Seeing the open, black mouth the young soldiers dropped
him in horror.

He died in the hospital at night, without having seen again.

The doctors saw the bruises on his legs, behind, and were silent.

The bodies of the two men lay together, side by side, in the mortuary,
the one white and slender, but laid rigidly at rest, the other looking
as if every moment it must rouse into life again, so young and unused,
from a slumber.

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