Trooper Tales — page 102: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

92 | Two Women and a Soldier. “Don’t you dare to use that ugly word!” she inter- rupted. The afternoon was warm and the flags of the tent were hung back. The sunlight rested upon the cov- erlet of Venning’s cot and buried itself in the yellow hair of the woman. She placed her hand tenderly upon the soldier’s forehead. His lips were white and smileless. There was silence for a moment. “Has any other woman visited you here?” The cavalryman opened his eyes quickly. There was pain in them, which the woman thought the wound caused. “No other woman has visited me here.” “Oh, how ill you are still, my poor soldier! Tell me, tell me at once if you are sorry I came to you!” The man did not answer at once. His eyes were closed. He was silently suffering. “IT thought,” the woman said slowly, “I thought that when you got your sick furlough we would——” The face of the younger woman was at the far end of _ the tent. Her dark, wide-open eyes mirrored the suffer- ing which was in her soul. For a moment she stood there—the only girl who had ever sounded the depths in the nature of her father’s orderly. And the woman who sat by Venning’s side saw the look which was upon the face of the maiden, and she leaned her face down close to that of the wounded cavalryman, so that he might not also see. Then she smiled sweetly, for she had long since mastered the mysteries of maiden (S(0) Comichooks