The Choir Invisible

"If any one single thing in life could ever have killed me," she said, "it

would have been that."

With her last words she finished the dressing of his wounds. Spots of the

deepest rose were on her cheeks; her eyes were lighted with proud fire.

Confusedly he thanked her and, lying back on his pillow, closed his eyes and

turned his face away.

When she had quickly gone he sat up in the bed again. He drew the book

guiltily from under his pillow, looked long and sorrowfully at it, and then

with a low cry of shame--the first that had ever burst from his lips--he

hurled it across the room and threw himself violently down again, with his

forehead against the logs, his eyes hidden, his face burning.