“I could tear out my eyes, Gerald, and give them to you. I could tear out my heart and give it to you. I’m bursting of pain. Gerald! Gerald!” There was no sense of proportion left her. She could think only of what her own physical suffering might do in penance. She would willingly have opened the arteries of her heart and bled for him on the moment. Her compassion wanted to scream. She, who had never sacrificed anything, wanted suddenly to bleed at his feet, and prayed to do so on the agonized crest of the moment. “There’s a girl! Why, I’m going to get well, Hester, and do what thousands of others of the blinded are doing. Build up a new, a useful, and a busy life.” “It’s not fair! It’s not fair!” “I’m ready now, except for this old left lung. It’s burned a bit, you see. Gas.” “God! God!” “It’s pretty bad, I admit. But there’s another way of looking at it. There’s a glory in being chosen to bear your country’s wounds.” “Your beautiful eyes! Your blue, beautiful eyes! O God, what does it all mean? Living! Dying! All the rotters, all the rat-eyed ones I know, scot-free and Gerald chosen. God, God, where are you?” “He was never so close to me as now, Hester. And with you here, dear, he is closer than ever.” “I’ll never leave you, Gerald,” she said, crying down into his sleeve again. “Don’t be afraid of the dark, dear! I’ll never leave you.” “Nonsense,” he said, smoothing her hair that the hat had fallen away from. “Never! Never! I wish I were a mat for you to walk on. I want to crawl on my hands and knees for you. I’ll never leave you, Gerald--never!” “My beautiful Hester!” he said unsteadily, and then again, “Nonsense.” But, almost on the moment, the man nurse returned, and she was obliged to leave him, but not without throbbing promises of the morrow’s return, and then there took place, down-stairs in an ante-room, a long, a closeted, and very private interview with a surgeon and more red tape and filing of applications. She was so weak from crying that a nurse was called finally to help her through the corridors to her car. Gerald’s left lung was burnt out, and he had three, possibly four, weeks to live. All the way home, in her tan limousine with the little yellow curtains, she sat quite upright, away from the upholstery, crying down her uncovered face, but a sudden, an exultant determination hardening in her mind. That night, a strange conversation took place in the Riverside Drive apartment. She sat on Wheeler’s left knee, toying with his platinum chain, a strained, a rather terrible pallor out in her face, but the sobs well under her voice, and its modulation about normal. She had been talking for over two hours, silencing his every interruption until he had fallen quite still. “And--and that’s all, Wheeler,” she ended up. “I’ve told you everything. We were never more than just--friends--Gerald and me. You must take my word for it, because I swear it before God.” “I take your word, Hester,” he said huskily.