He could not
have had any illusions. For Glenn Kilbourne the health and happiness and
success most men held so dear must have seemed impossible. His slow, daily,
tragic, and terrible task must have been something he owed himself. Not for
Carley Burch! She like all the others had failed him. How Carley shuddered
in confession of that! Not for the country which had used him and cast him
off! Carley divined now, as if by a flash of lightning, the meaning of
Glenn's strange, cold, scornful, and aloof manner when he had encountered
young men of his station, as capable and as strong as he, who had escaped
the service of the army. For him these men did not exist. They were less
than nothing. They had waxed fat on lucrative jobs; they had basked in the
presence of girls whose brothers and lovers were in the trenches or on the
turbulent sea, exposed to the ceaseless dread and almost ceaseless toil of
war. If Glenn's spirit had lifted him to endurance of war for the sake of
others, how then could it fail him in a precious duty of fidelity to
himself? Carley could see him day by day toiling in his lonely canyon--
plodding to his lonely cabin. He had been playing the game--fighting it out
alone as surely he knew his brothers of like misfortune were fighting.
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