Then
she saw David, and the regiment became one man to her. He was pale,
but his eyes shone, and his whole face expressed that two of the
best and bravest emotions of a man, love and loyalty, were at their
height as he gave his new-made wife a long, lingering look that
seemed to say:
"I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more."
Christie smiled and waved her hand to him, showed him his wedding
roses still on her breast, and bore up as gallantly as he, resolved
that his last impression of her should be a cheerful one. But when
it was all over, and nothing remained but the trampled street, the
hurrying crowd, the bleak November sky, when Mrs. Wilkins sat
sobbing on the steps like Niobe with her children scattered about
her, then Christie's heart gave way, and she hid her face on Mr.
Power's shoulder for a moment, all her ardor quenched in tears as
she cried within herself:
"No, I could not bear it if I was not going too!"
CHAPTER XVII.
THE COLONEL.
TEN years earlier Christie made her d?but as an Amazon, now she had
a braver part to play on a larger stage, with a nation for audience,
martial music and the boom of cannon for orchestra; the glare of
battle-fields was the "red light;" danger, disease, and death, the
foes she was to contend against; and the troupe she joined, not
timid girls, but high-hearted women, who fought gallantly till the
"demon" lay dead, and sang their song of exultation with bleeding
hearts, for this great spectacle was a dire tragedy to them.
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