When Wardwell awoke he was petulantly disappointed. He was not quite clear as to what he had expected, but that he should be awakened by the old hated smell of anesthetics was a distinct injury.

He did not feel any immediate physical discomfort, but he knew that this was only because his body had not yet begun to wake up. There were even now vague nerve stirrings in various scattered places through his body, though not connected with each other nor, directly, with him. He knew that these sensations would soon begin to link up with each other, and then they would connect up with him. Presently torture would begin. He knew the whole business. He had watched the process before, and he cringed at its advance.

He felt like a boy who has been cheated of some wonderful promised adventure which he had been just about to begin. He was lonely, and he had been cheated, and if he tried to make the slightest move now somebody would come and begin to poke at him. Why couldn't they leave him alone? He wanted to cry.

And yet there was a sort of elusive contentment about this place—he did not know where or what the place was, and did not care—some kind of a pleasant memory, as though some one had been here. He thought he could dream here—if only they would not come poking at him. Maybe he had been dreaming. He could not remember.

There had once been a little white room somewhere. He could not remember where, but it did not matter. Augusta was in the little white room. In fact the little white room and Augusta were much the same thing. You could not seem to see one without the other.

Why should he think of that little white room and Augusta here? Had Augusta been here? Somehow it seemed like a place where Augusta had just been. That was a funny thing to think of, but that was true about Augusta. He remembered how she had only to be a moment in a room, or any place, and when she went away you could know that Augusta had been there. There was a blessedness, some sort of a happy sweetness, that always came with her and which you could feel after she was gone.

It was strange that he should feel that haunting, ethereal presence of her here. It had never deceived him before. Could it be coming here to mock him now? That would be too much!

If he could only get back to sleep before they came to poke at him, maybe they would leave him alone, and—maybe he could dream. He must have been dreaming of Augusta.

As a matter of fact, Augusta had been in that place, in that room but a moment or two before. Perhaps some tone of her voice had touched something in Wardwell's numb brain and had waked him slowly.

She had not seen him. There was no good reason why she should go near him or see him. He was just one of twenty-five or thirty variously wrapped bundles that had just come down from the field stations, each containing a man. So long as the man slept after the jolting and the fainting fatigue of the journey, he need not be disturbed.

So Augusta had gone on about her affairs. For she was a very busy woman in a very busy place.

Now she was slowly following a surgeon as he worked his way down a long line of cots, stopping at each one to inspect the bandages which had been loosened by a nurse going before, giving instruction for the washing of a wound where he found that necessary, placing a few swift stitches where the condition of a cut or an open wound demanded, probing sharply and directly with never an unnecessary touch, a man who did three days' work in every one of his days, and often as much more in one of his nights, with a steady temper and a will that procreated discipline and swift service in those about him. He was a middle sized man with Scotch gray eyes, a short gray mustache, very small feet, and excessively large hands whose bones had been overdrawn by hard, grubbing work in his youth on a Maine farm. He was short and blunt of word as most strong men will be when they are putting the best of their lives into the strokes of their day's work. But he was sensitive as a cat or a bird to anything unusual in the air about him. He repeated with unvarying distinctness the few clear orders at the end of each examination, assuming as bluntly as if Augusta had been an echo, or an adding machine, that she heard correctly, that she wrote the instructions properly and that she took each page from her pad and stuck it on the chart at the head of each bed. She was there for that purpose, just like the rest of his instruments. But there was something about this girl today that seemed to be speaking. It was not speaking to him particularly, but to all the world that had the sense to understand. There was a persistent breath of happiness about her that was as patent as sunshine yet as elusive as a perfume in a dream.

After he had finished with the last of the row of men, he stopped in the act of drying his hands and looked quizzically at her. He remembered that yesterday and the day before he had seen in this girl's eyes a peculiar, strained, listening look, as though she were trying to see something or maybe hear something outside the range of ordinary senses. He had seen that the girl had been laboring under some terrifying anxiety, but, as it had not affected the mechanical perfection of her work, and certainly was not connected with the work, he had said nothing. Now as he saw the quiet loveliness of some assured happiness in her face, he said:

"Young lady, what wonderful thing have you been seeing, since yesterday?"

Augusta looked up at him in startled wonder, but she did not evade or ask him what he meant. She told him the simple truth, so that he might make what he would of it.

"It isn't anything that I've seen. It's just something that I know."

"Um-hum," agreed the doctor cordially. "Very satisfactory, I'm sure. And very illuminating."

He turned and went out of the ward door into the sunshine of the hot afternoon. Crossing the wide open court where the great red cross was painted on the hard whitewashed surface of the ground, he reflected that, whereas most women would have smiled and evaded and offered some subterfuge and he could then have guessed the facts to a practical certainty, this girl had probably spoken the precise truth—leaving him exactly as wise as he had been before asking.

Augusta, walking slowly back to the head of the line, wondered, smiling, just what the doctor would have said if she had really told him what she meant. She had spoken the literal truth, but it was very far from being what he would have thought truth.

Two days before she had caught a glimpse of Jimmie Wardwell lying with his head thrown back against a bank of stones and earth. And she had seen a great, gaping wound at the base of his throat where his shirt had been torn open. It was but an instant flash of vision that had come to her while she was in the act of writing a letter for a wounded man. The man had stopped for a moment, waiting to think of the next thing to be said in the letter. And while she sat waiting with her writing hand suspended over the paper she had looked straight at the dirty, streaked side of a ravine, and there was Jimmie lying there with a trace of a tired but triumphant little laugh on his face. Even in the instant she was sure that she saw him tremble and quiver back against the bank, as though death were striking.

Then the voice of the man on the cot beside her went on slowly—the letter was to his younger brother at home:

"Tell Mom not to bother any more with sweaters, we'll all be home for Christmas anyway."

Augusta's poised hand fell mechanically to the paper and began to write.

She had seen no more. All that day and yesterday she had strained at the windows of her soul, praying and striving to catch again a sight of her loved one. But there had come to her nothing but a cold, terrifying conviction that Jimmie was dead. It must be that he was dead, for if he were alive she was sure that she could make him know that she was crying to him, and she would be able to see him.

Through two days of heart agony she had walked and worked, her body and her outward mind responding capably to the demands of each minute, while her own inner being struggled with the desperation of death, to free itself from the limitations of the senses, so that it might find its mate. But, though her soul had cried and fought and suffered until it seemed that she herself must die, there had come to her vision nothing but the black wall of death.

Jimmie was dead. There was a corpse lying out somewhere under a bank—maybe the dirt had rolled down over it now—and that was the end. There was nothing more. The black conviction of despair, of hope dead and buried, settled down upon her. Her love was dead. This world was empty, and there was no other.

Late at night, lying alone in her little wood-walled room over in the nurses' pavilion, writhing in her pain, Augusta had spoken aloud.

"You fooled me, God," she said bitterly. "You taught me to believe. And there is nothing—nothing."

But the sound of her own voice in the uninterested darkness had turned her thought back to her self. She had only herself to blame. She had cheated herself. She had built up for herself a dream. How could she complain that she should not find it to be only a dream?

Three years ago, on that hideous last day in the little house among the trees in the Hills of Desire, she had stood looking at a scattered bundle of letters, and she had seen a glimpse of a woman's face, a dark, discontented, attractive face.

At that moment there had come into her mind, full formed, the thought that had been the key to her action and to the words that she had written on the typewriter for Jimmie.

She did not know whether Jimmie loved this woman. She did not greatly believe that he did. But it had come to her that her love was spoiled even by the thought that that other woman had looked at it. There was not room for her love in the same world where that other woman lived. Augusta could not share her love loaf even so much as to have it in the same world where there was another who thought greedily upon it.

Out of that thought had grown the conviction which she had written in the line to Jimmie. For this life their love had been spoiled. They were not to have it.

But as she still stood there a whisper had come to her—she had never thought to question whence it came—a clear, flashing, fearful hope had come to her. Jimmie and she might not live this life together. But one day—the sweet hope sang high to her heart—Jimmie and she, they two, would take the road together, the road that led through the Curtain to the Great Adventure in the Hills of All Desire.

She had lived through the years on the breath of that whisper which had come to her. She had believed in it as a promise. She had kept it in her heart. Only in the very secretest of her communings with the Jimmie to whom her heart constantly talked had she told it to him.

She had hardly put her thought into words, but it was a part of her faith in love. She would not believe that love like hers could die. She did not know how, or in what terms, but she was sure that, somehow, she and Jimmie would find the broken line of love and go on with it.

It had seemed so simple, when it was not near. She had all the time been sure that when Jimmie was ready to go—she had not thought that it would be very long—then she would know it, and she would be ready to go with him.

Many times in the three years she had known when Jimmie was in danger. Twice she had seen his name among Americans wounded with the Canadians. But she had not needed that outward evidence. She had often been able to call him and to feel his response. Though she had never before been able to see him, she had at all times known that he was living and going on.

And lately she had become almost bold. She had felt the coming of what was to be the great moment. She thought that she had felt the shadow of the wings of death—and she was not afraid. She believed that Jimmie would soon be taking the road into the Beyond—and she grew almost openly confident that she was going with him. She had lived on the very tip of every moment. With a strange defiance of reality, she, a soundly healthy young woman—not knowingly exposed to any more danger than twenty million other inhabitants of France, went into every action of her waking hours with a sort of provisional apology. It might be that she should not have time to finish that action. If so, would some one please see to it.

She had forgotten completely that other woman. She remembered only the dear and perfect love of those months alone with Jimmie; the joy of the irresponsible hours upon the road; the fearful sweetness of their utter seclusion in the hills and their complete dependence one upon the other. She seemed to see now that they had, in those months, realized all the very best that this world gives in love.

She had even come to think that she was glad that their perfect days of love had ended in a sharp crash. How pitiful it would have been to have seen that love, which was all beauty and tenderness and sacrifice on both sides, dribble down into the commonplace of discontent, or, at best, a kindly tolerance! She was glad that it had come to an end while it was yet a perfect, beautiful thing; glad that she could link those months of wonder love directly with the wonder and mystery of what was to come to them.

The three years of separation had not kept them apart. It seemed that they had at first been thrown violently away from each other. But there had been an immediate rebound, and Augusta knew that they had ever since been approaching each other in understanding and spirit. She had worked, and trained, to prepare herself for this work so dear to her which she was doing now. And Jimmie had suffered—here in France. Augusta's eyes had seen the things which he must have gone through, things which her heart and her intuitions had before told her concerning him. But all seemed only to fit them into the design that was prepared for them. In fact, in the supreme egoism of love, it had not been difficult to believe that the whole world's tragedy had been in some measure arranged to form a setting for their love.

Every subconscious thought of her waking days, every half formed dream of day or night had of late been bringing Jimmie to Augusta, until it seemed that the terrible world about her—which she was still obliged to call reality—could not much longer persist. The end must be near. For she had felt the coming of her love so vividly that material, brute things could not much longer keep it from her.

Jimmie was coming to her! The mistakes, the travail, the dim misunderstandings of this phase of being which was called life, would soon be past. Jimmie and she would once more take the open road out into the country of God.

For weeks her spirit had lived upon and breathed upon her dream, until it, the dream, had become to her the real. And it seemed to her that she was already going through the transition that would bring her out with Jimmie upon the glorious, untried road that lay beyond the world's death. She had no fear. The very daring of her dream had raised in her a faith in love that trembled at nothing.

And then, in an instant, everything had gone black.

She had seen Jimmie. And she had thought that she saw Jimmie die, and—and—nothing—

Jimmie was gone from her forever. And there was left to her nothing but the dry little reflection that she had been a fool.

In those two black days when her soul strained, listening and watching over the edges of the normal world, she had breasted the dark tide of despair running full down upon her, and not even she herself could have told how near she was to going down under it.

And in the darkness, as would happen, the old love came back to mock her. Oh, why, why? had she not kept the love that was hers? Why had she not fought that dark woman for it? She had meanly run away, because it was not good enough, because it was not perfect. Because she had found a flaw in it she had thrown away her jewel.

Now it was given her, for punishment, to know how good that love had been. The touch of Jimmie's clumsy hands as he had tucked her into her hammock at night burned her now with the maddening sweetness of a lost dream. The nights when she had watched over him, the pride and the swelling love of seeing rugged health come back to him, the memories of brave, struggling, laughing walks by his side through wind and snow, all these and a thousand dear, intimate memories came to haunt her with the mocking difference between a warm, happy human love, and the empty dream that she had made for herself.

But she did not go down under despair.

Jimmie was gone. She would never be near him again. She did not say it. But she had no strength to deny it. She was dumb. She was defeated. There was nothing to live for, and, apparently, nothing to die for.

But her heart held on, beaten, unhoping, but living.

And today, not an hour ago, a wonderful thing had happened. A miracle had stolen upon her unawares. She could not now say just where she was or what she was doing at the time. She had heard nothing, seen nothing. But she found that she was suddenly, and unaccountably, certain that Jimmie was not dead.

She did not try to think what might have brought this intelligence to her. Perhaps he had come back to consciousness and his heart had answered her. She did not care. She did not want to think. Her dream had sprung back to life again and was once more carrying her, happy but still trembling and fearful, up again through the heights from which she had fallen.

She had told the doctor the exact truth. It was not anything that she had seen or heard. But she knew that somehow a message had come to her heart from Jimmie. God had not mocked her faith. She knew. And she waited.

It was a long, long summer afternoon through which she worked and waited, her spirit quivering to the sense of a great wonder hovering near at hand. She did not feel or recognize any premonition that Wardwell was physically near her. She had schooled herself well since those terrible early days, back in the base hospital, when she had fearfully crept near to and studied every long bundle of a broken man that was brought in, praying that it might be, and that it might not be, Jimmie. She did not do those things now, for she had learned the heavy cost of them upon her strength and her nerves. And now, too, she was still living upon that sight of Jimmie lying out in the open at the foot of a bank, and, curiously, she did not think of him as having been moved from there.

When Wardwell awoke again it was because his throat was hurting abominably. His mind seemed to clear instantly, and he could not remember to have felt so wide awake in a long time. He supposed that this meant that he was going to get well again. He was not pleased with the prospect, for the weeks of monotonous endurance just ahead were too well known to be welcome; but he guessed that he would have to go through with it. This confounded pain in his throat was about the worst thing he had ever experienced. His mouth was all hard and cracked inside and the big bandage above his shoulders seemed to be set on purpose to choke him. He would like to put up his hand and see if he couldn't ease it a little, but he was sure that as soon as he made a move someone would notice him, and they would begin the business of poking at him. He would rather stand this as long as he could if only he were left to himself.

It was night now—he knew the shaded lights, the enforced quiet, the restless murmurings of men asleep and half asleep, the feeling of a hospital ward at night, as well as he knew the sound of his own breathing—and he had been moved since that last time when he had been awake. Maybe they had been obliged to clear him out of the receiving ward—probably that was where he had been that last time—without operating on him. Maybe the boys were coming down from the stations pretty fast. He had seen hospitals when the surgeons couldn't begin to keep up with the work as the men were brought in. In fact he had seen everything. He had seen the whole blasted wreck of war from beginning to end, and he didn't want to see any more of it.

His head was propped a little, so that he could just see over the roll of bandage on his neck. A wardmaster was coming softly down the lane between the two rows of cots. "I know his kind," Wardwell muttered mentally, while he shut his eyes and waited, perfectly quiet, for the wardmaster to pass, "their idea of a good time is to pop a fellow out of a sound sleep right bang onto an operating table."

He felt rather than heard the wardmaster stop an instant at the foot of the cot, looking down at him, then he heard the footfall go softly on down the lane. "Fooled you that time, old scout," thought Wardwell, with a sort of a foolish gladness and a feeling that he was just about to either laugh or cry. His throat did hurt like fury.

Then he thought of Augusta. Curious, but he had been certain that she was somewhere near that last time when he had been awake. Now he did not seem to be able to feel her near. But just then his mind played a trick upon him. He did not know whether or not he had shut his eyes for the moment, but he saw something that he very distinctly remembered having seen before. One feverish night, in the wagon, on the road, four years ago, he had wakened from an early sleep. A bar of white moonlight came in through a little square opening above the flap of the wagon and fell directly on the pale golden crown of Augusta's rippling hair. She was kneeling on the bare floor of the wagon, her arms and head sagged forward into her little hammock.

She had fallen asleep at her night prayers.

And he felt now the big choking throb of pity and tenderness and love that had come up in his throat at the sight of her. The memory dropped away instantly, and he was again staring through the dimmed lights at the bare board walls of the long ward room. But it did not seem that Augusta was quite so far away as she had been when he awoke.

It is of no connection here. But Augusta was, at that moment, across the open court in the nurses' pavilion, in the dark by the side of her own cot, happily saying her tired night prayers.

Wardwell lay quiet a little while, wondering how long he would be able to hold out against the burning pain in his throat. Perhaps he was foolish after all. Maybe he might as well call attention to himself and let them have it over with. They wouldn't hurt him any more than this.

There was a queer thumping noise coming from somewhere, which he could not make out, and which annoyed him. It was not gunfire of any kind—didn't he know every kind?—and if it were, what would it be doing around here? He must be miles and miles down from any fighting line. This was a regular, big, established hospital. He had no idea as to just where it was, but it was certainty a long way from where fighting was to be done. Yet there were explosions going on somewhere around here. He had no personal interest in the matter, but he wanted to know what the deuce they were thinking of. Didn't they know that there were wounded men here who ought to have quiet!

But the thumping kept on, and came closer.

Now there were other sounds, voices outside. Other people had noticed the thing, and they were going to have it stopped. Well, it certainly ought to be stopped. Wardwell saw that some of the fellows around him were being waked up by it, and he felt sorry and indignant for them. It was a shame! Some confounded fool—

The heavy thud and shudder of an explosion shook the light walls of the ward, and on its heels there followed a roaring, tearing, ripping sound of timbers and boards being torn apart and flung about through the air. Then there rose the cries of men and women, running together and shouting in the night. Then you could hear sharp orders snapped out of the confusion.

Another and more terrifying explosion blew out the end of a building just a little way from the ward where Wardwell lay, and a flying timber, driven endwise, jabbed through the roof and stuck six feet of its length into the ward, right over a fellow's head, fourth bed to the left. Wardwell was sure he counted right. He would like to know who the poor fellow—

Now there came a continuous rock and roar that seemed to come right up out of the earth and turn to smash everything flat, and the popping of aircraft guns hurried up by cursing men began to announce the hideous truth of what was happening.

A man whose cot lay foot to foot across from Wardwell's sat straight up. He was an oldish man, among the men here, with a good round face and a bald head.

"God blast them blind!" he said soberly. "They're bombing the Red Cross right over our heads!"

The wardmaster came walking up the line between the beds, speaking steadily through the roaring, splintering din.

"Silence, boys," he was saying, "and keep the blankets up over you. It's all we can do. They're passing over now. It can't last long."

Now Wardwell considered this thing, and his hands went slowly and craftily up to the bandages around his neck. He was fairly certain that if he loosened the bandages he would bleed and faint and die in a very short time. God! A man had some rights in this business!

He had stood out and lain out to be shot at from every angle with every kind of a gun that had been made. And he had not even complained at the gas. But to be butchered now, when he was lying here with a pain in his throat that would have made him cry if even the gentlest nurse's hand touched him! He would not have it! A man had some rights!

His hands found the bandages and began to tug at them, but a frightful crash up at the end of the ward, where the wardmaster had just walked, held his attention for a moment.

In the tail light of the explosion he saw boards, and men, and a medicine chest, and beds, and the end of the building, erupting all together out into the night. And then, when he could look again he saw through the open space the low horizon stars shining gently in their places.

The lights were gone now, and he could feel the fright rising in the men around him. They were afraid in the dark. They began to yell. Some swore queer oaths, original ones, with tears in their throats. Some called to God. And some yelled pitifully to somebody to bring a light.

Wardwell began again to tug at the bandages.

But just then, above the cursing, and some praying, and the frightful, tearing roar of death all about, he heard a girl, down near the end of the room that was still sound, a girl had come into the ward singing. He listened, and the words that he heard were these:

High and sweet as the voice of a robin bird in the trees of the Hills of Desire he heard the voice of his love.

Then the howl and the tearing jaws of death all around had their sway again. He had thought always that Augusta would somehow come to him before the end. But, My God! he had never bargained for this! This was real! Augusta was here, in this death hole! He must get her out of here. What business had she! Who had let her come here?

He was out of his cot and staggering, bumping down the cot frames, toward the voice that rang again triumphant, singing:

Now he was coming near her. Now! Another staggering step or two, if he could only keep his feet straight! Now he was just going to touch her, to take her in his arms! He had almost lurched past her in the dark. Now he had her in his arms! He thought he whispered her name, but it was really a wild yell in her ear:

"Augusta!"

In the first swaying, burning instant their hearts leaped together and were one at last. There was nothing from the past; nothing to be explained, nothing to be condoned. Love and truth had burned all things clear and true for them. They belonged to each other. They were of each other. And neither life nor death could touch their love now!

And now, curiously, it was Wardwell who did not resist what seemed to be the conclusion of fate. He had not wanted to die with Augusta. He had wanted to live with her! But now, if she had foreseen this, that they were to go together in this way: Well, he was willing to take her lead, as always. She should have her way. Her way was always right.

But Augusta had her love in her arms, and he was wounded, and fainting, and leaning upon her. The fierce, protecting surge of mothering nature rose up in her. She looked into the face of fire, and red murder, and death, and sprang into battle with them all for him. They should not have him! He was hers, and she would have him!

She had come into her ward singing her little song, to help the poor fellows through a bad few minutes. She could not have dreamed that it was to be as bad as this fiendish reality, but she had already forgotten her indignation, her pity, her thought of anyone or anything but Jimmie Wardwell who was swaying leaning upon her breast. To take him out of here to the blessed open, to keep him from being hurt, was the thing, it seemed, for which she had lived her life!

The short moment of darkness in which they had somehow found each other was blasted out into a white flaring light and they were shaken stumbling and trembling together by an explosion which completely blew out the end of the building where Augusta had come in.

Looking over her shoulder she saw that she must take him, carry him if he could not help her, out through that band of fire where already the jagged sides and roof of the building were being fringed with scallops of licking flame.

She called on him for an effort, pleading with him to try, to put one foot before another, to help just one little bit. But his weight lay almost dead upon her shoulder. He was fainting from his effort to come to her and from the shock of the last terrible explosion. She must do all herself. The hoop of fire flamed before her, through which she must drag him, and her mind and reason quailed but her heart fought on for its love, blessing God for the strong sure feet that the hills had given her and the cunning strength in handling the helpless bodies of men which her training had taught her. These things had been given to her for this her moment.

Her ears were full of the fearful cries of men in madness, her eyes were open only to see that ring of fire toward which she was staggering with her burden, but her heart was strong and sure. What cared she for the dreams of a heaven that she had made, when she had the warm body of her love in her arms!

All the women in creation might write love letters to him, but he was hers and she would take him through that ring of fire and out to safety! He was hers, and she would have him!

Men shouted to her, to go back, that help was coming quickly another way, that she was crazy to try to go out that way. But she fought her way out step by step, through all the blurring horror, up to the ring of fire, and, staggering, whispering, praying to her love, she went stumbling through wreck and spitting flames, half carrying, half dragging her man out into God's open.

A little way out in the grass, away from the worst of the danger, she stopped—she could go no farther—and let him slip, cunningly and gently as she could, full length upon the ground.

For the moment, they were left alone. Men running shouting to the work of rescue did not heed them. And Augusta knelt fixing the big bandage to Jimmie's throat, and whispering to him. For now, when the strength of her body was exhausted, her heart went cold with the fear that he had died in her arms.

But the cool freshness of the grass came up like a reviving shock to Wardwell's body. He stirred easily, drew two or three good breaths, and then he spoke, slowly and easily.

"How is it, dear," he asked, plainly knowing that Augusta was there with him, "are we going on, or do we stay? Whichever it is, you know, I'm for you."

Augusta gave one little animal cry of pure joy. For, instantly, she knew that all was well, that she would have him again, alive and strong! Then she bubbled over in tears and the hysteria of gladness, crying:

"We're going to stay, Jimmie darling, we're going to stay! And if I wasn't afraid of hurting you, I'd hug and kiss you till—!"

"Oh, you might take a chance—" said Jimmie. And he went contentedly off to sleep.

Out of the chaos of noise and the uncertain light a big tall doctor man came striding across the grass to them, dressed in a long white operating coat which he had forgotten to throw off.

Augusta rose to her knees and to her overstrained senses the tall white figure advancing upon her must have taken on some kind of a supernatural appearance. We do not know just what was in her mind, probably it is not important. But she raised her hand in a foolish little salute, and said, somewhat apologetically, to the doctor:

"If you please, God, we've changed our mind. We'd much rather live."

Then she slid quietly down in a faint beside Jimmie.

To this day that surgeon thinks that he did not hear correctly.

Printed in the United States of America