So February and March were gone. Mavering said there was a big fight coming, went away, and came no more; nor the gray man, either, who was absorbed in his hospitals and his "average young man," and grown hollow-eyed with watchings and strenuous sympathy. Everything gone, nothing coming except spring and letters from Hagar; nothing staying except Gard himself and Sabrina, who reminded one of melting butter, but of whom the quantity grew no less. "Hagar! Hagar!" the high fluting voice seemed now to call continually, till the tension of his longing, Gard fancied, would pull Hagar to him if he did not go soon. Late in April they packed him into a night train, and all night, or whenever he awoke and looked out, the earth seemed to be running away southward, as if sucked towards the whirlpool of the war, but the stars to be travelling northward with him. How impatient they were! How they snapped and danced and quivered! "Hurry, hurry! But you will see how we will shine over Hagar and forget the bleak laws of our journeyings, and be nightlamps in Helen's garden." In the morning the train stood still in the terminal. He had some hours to wait. He crept through the station. The rattle and roar of the city met him at the door. The few returning soldiers like himself were lost in pursuing crowds, the only signs here of the war that to southward had seemed branded on the soil and written across the street fronts. A policeman caught sight of his uniform, and added some points to his rank, out of benevolence. "What'll you have, colonel?" "I think I'll have a cab."