opinion, and too sad and abstracted altogether, to notice
that he was paying me a compliment. 'I can, indeed; indeed, you haven't
seen the best part of me.'

He smiled just the ghost of a smile in answer, as we went in. He led me
through several rooms into what had been a large dining hall--a chill,
bare, desolate place. Cots were ranged up and down the room, cots across
it, cots filled up the centre, and all, _all_ filled with sick and
wounded men. I thought if I was once in the room with my brother, some
instinct would lead me to him; but I felt no drawing toward any one of
those miserable bedsides, and a chill of disappointment fell upon me.
'Take me to the ward where my brother is lying,' I said to the doctor,
pleadingly, 'ah, pray do!' 'This _is_ the ward,' he replied, but he did
not take me to him. He stopped at every cot we passed. Of my burning
impatience, which he could not choose but see, of the urgent and almost
passionate appeals I made to hasten his progress, he took no notice
whatever. He stopped almost every moment; he felt the pulse of one
patient, questioned another, dealt out medicine here and there--took his
own time for everything. We stopped at last where, on the outside of the
coverlet, lay a wounded soldier, half dressed; a poor, mutilated
creature; a leg and an arm were gone. The face was turned toward the
wall, away from us; not a muscle moved; he was sleeping, probably. 'Take
me to my brother,' I piteously moaned, shuddering with horror as I
turned from the unaccustomed sight. 'I have waited so long; do take me
to my brother.' 'This is somebody's brother!' said the doctor, sharply.
Something in the tone, not the sharpness of it--something half familiar
in the broken outline of the form, caused a half-suffocating sense of a
vague, unutterable horror. A deathly faintness seized me; I sank into a
chair beside the bed. The doctor gave me water to drink--hastily and
silently sprinkled some water upon my head and face. There was a
movement of the poor maimed form upon the bed--he gave me a warning
look--the face turned toward us. It was my darling's! 'My life!'
Shivering and shuddering I threw myself upon the narrow bed beside him,
clasped my poor darling in my arms, and held his stricken heart to mine.
The hard, defiant look upon his features melted into one of
tenderness--down the worn face the tears fell slowly. 'I didn't know as
you would love me just the same,' he said. It was his right arm that