War was its business, bravery its duty, and cowardice its greatest crime--above all, that ultimate, puling cowardice of accepting life empty for its own barren sake.
At the last I lay on a cot in a field hospital, entertained for the moment by the novelty of that vacant, spacious feeling on my left side--wondering if I could shave now with one arm--without another hand to pull my face into hard little hummocks for the razor.
I heard the soft quick tread of a hospital steward, and standing before me, he took from its envelope the letter Solon Denney had sent me to say that she was dead.

I handed it back, told him to burn it, and I shut my eyes to the sickening shapes of life.

My fever came up again, and in the night I felt inch by inch over ground wet with blood for a picture I had relinquished in a Quixotic moment.

I must have been troublesome, for they gave me the drug of dreams and I awakened peacefully.

I watched the field surgeons gather about a young line officer brought in with a shot through his neck.