Lorraine, A Romance

She raised her other hand and laid it in his. "I need you," she said; "I am too tired, too young, to be so alone. It is myself I suffer for; think, Jack, myself, in such a moment. I am selfish, I know it. Oh, if I could weep now! Why can I not? I loved my father. And now I can only think of his little machines in the turret and his balloon, and--oh!--I only remember the long days of my life when I waited on the turret stairs hoping he would come out, dreaming he would come some day and take me in his arms and kiss me and hold me close, as I am to you. And now he never will. And I waited all my life!"

"Hush!" he whispered, touching her hair; "you are feverish."

Her head was pressed close to him; his arms held her tightly; she sighed like a restless child.

"Never again--never--for he is dead. And yet I could have lived forever, waiting for him on the turret stairs. Do you understand?"

Holding her strained to his breast he trembled at the fierce hopelessness in her voice. In a moment he recognized that a crisis was coming; that she was utterly irresponsible, utterly beyond reasoning. Like a spectre her loveless childhood had risen and confronted her; and now that there was no longer even hope, she had turned desperately upon herself with the blank despair of a wounded animal. End it all!--that was her one impulse. He felt it already taking shape; she shivered in his arms.

"But there is a God--" he began, fearfully.

She looked up at him with vacant eyes, hot and burning.

He tried again: "I love you, Lorraine--"

Her straight brows knitted and she struggled to free herself.

"Let me go!" she whispered. "I do not wish to live--I can't!--I can't!"

Then he played his last card, and, holding her close, looked straight into her eyes.

"France needs us all," he said.

She grew quiet. Suddenly the warm blood dyed her cheeks. Then, drop by drop, the tears came; her sweet face, wet and flushed, nestled quietly close to his own face.

"We will both live for that," he said; "we will do what we can."

For an hour she lay sobbing her heart out in his arms; and when she was quiet at last he told her how the land lay trembling under the invasion, how their armies had struggled and dwindled and lost ground, how France, humbled, drenched with blood and tears, still stood upright calling to her children. He spoke of the dead, the dying, the mutilated creatures gasping out their souls in the ditches.