His heart ached for it so that he could not bear the pain, and
he turned his back on it. It was cruel to keep it up so long. His
keeper lifted him in his arms, and pulled him into a dirty uniform
which had belonged, apparently, to a much larger man--a man who had
been killed probably, for there were dark brown marks of blood on the
tunic and breeches. When he tried to stand on his feet, Castle Garden
and the Battery disappeared in a black cloud of night, just as he knew
they would; but when he opened his eyes from the stretcher, they had
returned again. It was a most remarkably vivid vision. They kept it up
so well. Now the young Doctor and the hospital steward were pretending
to carry him down a gangplank and into an open space; and he saw quite
close to him a long line policemen, and behind them thousands of
faces, some of them women's faces--women who pointed at him and then
shook their heads and cried, and pressed their hands to their cheeks,
still looking at him. He wondered why they cried. He did not know
them, nor did they know him. No one knew him; these people were only
ghosts.
There was a quick parting in the crowd. A man he had once known shoved
two of the policemen to one side, and he heard a girl's voice speaking
his name, like a sob; and She came running out across the open space
and fell on her knees beside the stretcher, and bent down over him,
and he was clasped in two young, firm arms.
"Of course it is not real, of course it is not She," he assured
himself.
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