"
As Chesterton rode away the words remained gratefully in his memory and
filled him with pleasant thoughts. "The world," he mused, "is full of
just such kind and gentle souls."
After an interminable delay he reached Newport, and they escaped from
the others, and Miss Armitage and he ran down the lawn to the rocks, and
stood with the waves whispering at their feet.
It was the moment for which each had so often longed, with which both
had so often tortured themselves by living in imagination, that now,
that it was theirs, they were fearful it might not be true.
Finally, he said: "And the charm never failed! Indeed, it was wonderful!
It stood by me so obviously. For instance, the night before San Juan,
in the mill at El Poso, I slept on the same poncho with another
correspondent. I woke up with a raging appetite for bacon and coffee,
and he woke up out of his mind, and with a temperature of one hundred
and four. And again, I was standing by Capron's gun at El Caney, when
a shell took the three men who served it, and only scared ME. And there
was another time--" He stopped. "Anyway," he laughed, "here I am."
"But there was one night, one awful night," began the girl. She
trembled, and he made this an added excuse for drawing her closer to
him. "When I felt you were in great peril, that you would surely die.
And all through the night I knelt by the window and looked toward Cuba
and prayed, and prayed to God to let you live.
Pages:
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30