He was finishing his vision of the field of Gettysburg--the three-days’ grapple between two titan armies, that meant to him three weeks of soul-terrifying toil. Men had said that Gettysburg meant the turning Of the tide, that victory was certain; and yet there had followed Sherman’s long campaign, and all the horror of the Wilderness fighting, and Mine Run and Cold Harbor and the ghastly siege of Petersburg. And now Thyrsis had to fight his way through this. He saw the figure that he had dreamed, and that possessed him; a soldier who was the rage of the War incarnate, the awakened frenzy of the nation. He was a man lifted above pain and cold and hunger; he was gaunt and wild of aspect, restless and impatient, driving, driving to the end. He went about the duties of the camp like one in a dream; he marched like an automaton--for hours, or for days, as need might be--his thoughts flying on to those moments that alone were real to him, to the charge and the fury of the conflict, the blows that were the only things that counted. He lived amid sights and sounds of horror, with groans and weeping in his ears, with a mist of blood and cannon-smoke before his eyes; he drove on, grim and implacable, the very ground about him rocking and quivering in a delirium of torment. He was the War! Meantime Corydon was growing paler, and more wretched than ever. For her, too, this winter was symbolized as a battle-ground. To him it was a field in which armies clashed, and the issue was uncertain; but to her it was a field of inevitable defeat, strewn with the corpses of her hopes. For hours she would lie upon her couch in the night-watches, silent, alone, staring out of the window at the wide waste of snow in the pitiless moonlight. Thyrsis would have preferred to sleep in his own study, as he worked so late at night; but Corydon begged him not to do this, she would rather be wakened, she said. So, on one occasion, he came over at about two o’clock in the morning, and found her sleeping, as he thought, and crawled into his own cot. He was just dozing off to sleep, when he heard what he thought was a stifled sob. He listened; he thought that she was crying in her sleep. But then, as the sound grew clearer, he sat up. The moonlight was shining in upon her, and Thyrsis caught a bright glint of steel. Swift as a flash the meaning of that swept over him. He had provided her with a revolver, that she might feel safe when she was left alone; and now he bounded out of bed and sprang across the room, and found her with the weapon pointed at her head. He struck it away; and Corydon, with a terrified cry, clutched at him and collapsed in his arms. “Oh Thyrsis!” she wailed. “Save me! Save me!” “What is it?” he gasped. “I couldn’t do it!” she cried, choking. “I couldn’t! I tried--I tried so hard!” “Sweetheart”, he whispered, in terror. “Don’t let me do it!” she sobbed. “Oh, Thyrsis, you must save me!”