"I knew nothing about it myself twenty-four hours before it happened," answered John Manning. "You need not look surprised. It is a simple story. I had this shot through the breast at Gettysburg last Fourth of July. I lay on the hill-side a day and a night before relief came. Then a farmer took me into his house. A military surgeon dressed my wounds, but I owed my life to the nursing and care and unceasing attention of a young lady who was staying with the farmer's daughter. She had been doing her duty as a nurse as near to the field as she could go ever since the first Bull Run. She saved my life, and I gave it to her--what there was of it. She was a beautiful woman, indeed I never saw a more beautiful--and she has a strange likeness to--but that you shall see for yourself when you see her. She is getting a little rest now, for she has been up all night attending to me. She _will_ wait on me in spite of all I say; of course I know there is no use wasting effort on me now. She is the most devoted nurse in the world; and we shall part as we met--she taking care of me at the last as she did at the first. Would God our relation had never been other than patient and nurse! It would have been better for both had we never been husband and wife!" And John Manning turned his face to the wall with a weary sigh; then he coughed harshly and raised his hand to his breast as though to stifle the burning within him. "It seems to me, John, that you ought not to talk like that of the woman you loved," said Laurence Laughton, with unusual seriousness. "I never loved her," answered Manning, coldly. Then he turned and asked hastily, "Do you think I should want to die, if I loved her?" "But she loves you," said Laurence. "She never loved me!" was Manning's impatient retort. "Then why were you married?" "That's what I would like to know. It was fate, I suppose. What is to be, is. I never used to believe in predestination, but I know that of my own free will I could never have done what I did." "I confess I do not understand you," said Larry. "I do not understand myself. There is so much in this world that is mysterious--I hope the next will be different. I was under the charm, I fancy, when I married her. She is a beautiful woman, as I told you, and I was a man, and I was weak, and I had hope. Why she married me that early September evening, I do not know. It was not long before we both found out our mistake. And it was too late then. We were man and wife. Don't suppose I blame her--I do not. I have no cause of complaint. She is a good wife to me, as I have tried to be a good husband to her. We made a mistake in marrying each other, and we know it--that's all!"