second battle of Ypres, his battalion had been in support when the Germans made the first gas attack and his comrades and he had moved forward to hold the line; his closest friend had been badly gassed while Barney himself by some luck had almost escaped harm; and Barney had lain, unable to do anything to help, while the one he loved most in the world was dying.
Why was this moment beside the bed of a strange woman so like that; why, indeed, did it tear at him more mercilessly even than had that?
Not alone because he saw upon her the terrible testimony of agony. Her face, as she lay turned toward him, was beautiful, though illness and intense suffering she had surely endured. Her skin was clear and lovely even in its deathly pallor; her hair—black and abundant—had clung to its luster as had her dark brows and the lashes which lay on her cheek. The ordeal of pain, which had worn the flesh from her cheek bones, had been powerless to destroy the beauty of her forehead, of the line of her nose and the resoluteness of her chin. Her lips were very thin; yet a tint of blood lay in them; they told most pitilessly how she must have suffered and how she had refused to capitulate to pain or to the threat of death. She had fallen into this stupor of sleep—Barney thought—aware that the doctors had given her up; but, with her whole being, she was determined to live. Even now the indomitable soul of her—that essence of her spirit which persisted though consciousness long was gone—was keeping up the fight, Barney felt. And he wanted her to win; oh, how he wanted her to win!
It seemed to him he had never wished so for another's life; and why? Because, for the first time,
