--Yes,_ him_, with the pinned sleeve, the noble, seamed, eager face.
They met as friends. . . . In later years the lieutenant could never
remember a word that passed, if any passed at all. He was inclined
to think that they met and walked together in complete silence, for
many minutes. Yet he ever maintained that they walked as two friends
whose thoughts hold converse without need of words. He was not
terrified at all. He ever insisted, on the contrary, that there, in
the cold of the breaking day, his heart was light and warm as though
flooded with first love--not troubled by it, as youth in first love
is wont to be--but bathed in it; he, the ardent young officer, bathed
in a glow of affection, ennobling, exalting him, making him free of a
brotherhood he had never guessed.
He used also, in telling the story, to scandalise the clergyman of
his parish by quoting the evangelists, and especially St. John's
narrative of Mary Magdalen at the sepulchre.
For the door of the house opened at length; and a beautiful woman,
scarred by knowledge of the world, came down the alley, slowly,
unaware of him. Then (said he), as she approached, his hand went up
to his pocket for the private letter he carried, and the shade at his
side left him to face her in the daylight.
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