More days passed, and still she did not return. His eagerness for her rose
and followed, and sorrowfully set with every sun.
Meantime he read the book, beginning it with an effort through finding it
hard to withdraw his mind from his present. But soon he was clutching it
with a forgotten hand and lay on his bed for hours joined fast to it with
unreleasing eyes; draining its last words into his heart, with a thirst
newly begotten and growing always the more quenchless as it was always being
quenched. So that having finished it, he read it again, now seeing the high
end of it all from the low beginning. And then a third time, more
clingingly, more yearningly yet, thrice lighting the fire in his blood with
the same straw. Like a vital fire it was left in him at last, a red and
white of flame; the two flames forever hostile, and seeking each to burn the
other out. And while it stayed in him thus as a fire, it had also filled all
tissues of his being as water fills a sponge--not dead water a dead
sponge--but as a living sap runs through the living sponges of a young oak
on the edge of its summer. So that never should he be able to forget it;
never henceforth be the same in knowledge or heart or conscience; and
nevermore was the lone spiritual battle of his life, if haply waged at all,
to be fought out by him with the earlier, simpler weapons of his innocence
and his youth, but with all the might of a tempted man's high faith in the
beauty and the right and the divine supremacy of goodness.
One morning his wounds had begun to require attention. No one had yet come
to him: it was hardly the customary hour: and moreover, by rising in bed he
could see that something unusual had drawn the people into the streets. The
news of a massacre on the western frontier, perhaps; the arrival of the
post-rider with angry despatches from the East; or the torch of revolution
thrown far northward from New Orleans. His face had flushed with feverish
waiting and he lay with his eyes turned restlessly toward the door.
It was Mrs. Falconer who stepped forward to it with hesitation. But as soon
as she caught sight of him, she hurried to the bed.
"What is the trouble? Have you been worse?"
"Oh, nothing! It is nothing."
"Why do you say that--to me?"
"My shoulder. But it is hardly time for them to come yet."
She hesitated and her face showed how serious her struggle was.
"Let me," she said firmly.