I heard the soft quick tread of a hospital steward, and standing before me, he took from its envelope the letter Solon Denney had sent me to say that she was dead.  I handed it back, told him to burn it, and I shut my eyes to the sickening shapes of life.  My fever came up again, and in the night I felt inch by inch over ground wet with blood for a picture I had relinquished in a Quixotic moment.  I must have been troublesome, for they gave me the drug of dreams and I awakened peacefully.  I watched the field surgeons gather about a young line officer brought in with a shot through his neck.  For the better probing of the wound they removed his head and gave it to me to hold.  Seeing that it was Solon Denney’s head, I was seized with a mood of jest—­I would hide it and make Solon search.  I advanced craftily down an endless corridor, but came to the edge of a wood, where there was a wicked spitting of shots.  I cried out again, and once more they gave me the drug.  Then I dreamed more quietly.  I saw that the soul of my dead arm searched for her soul—­that it would soon be drawn to her and offer itself to comfort her and never, never leave her.  It would say, “At least take the arm, since you may have it without the face.”  It seemed that my other arm should go to her, too.  This side of her there could be nothing for either to close upon.  It appeared to me that I fell asleep on this fancy and dreamt that I awoke painfully to a poor, one-sided life, effortless, barren, forbidding.

A year later I went back to the Little Country to be counsellor at law to its people in time of need, and a father to Solon Denney and his two children.  Solon could direct large affairs acceptably, but he and his babes were as thistle-down in a prairie wind.

He brought the children to visit me the first day that I came home—­to a home where I was now to live alone.

I sat on the little porch above the river bank, by the wall of blossoming creeper whose tendrils she had once embraced, bringing her cheek intrepidly against the blossoms of that year, and saw him come slowly up the path.  He seemed so sadly alone because of the two little creatures that followed him.

I placed a chair for Solon and was confronted by my namesake.

“Did they shoot your arm off in the war?” he asked.

“Yes, in the war.”

He patted the empty sleeve, and his eyes beamed with discovery.

“What did you have your sleeve rolled up for when your arm was shot?”

I made plain to him the mystery of the whole sleeve.

“She often spoke of you,” said Solon.  “She seemed to think you would like to be a help to us if you could.”

I turned to greet the woman child, but she had strayed into the house.  I heard her shouts from my bedroom.  Then she came running to us, cooing in helpless joy.

“Candy—­candy—­Uncle Maje—­lovely candy—­all pink and dusty.”

Well over a face set with the mother’s eyes was spilled that which she had clutched and eaten of,—­a thing pink and dusty, in truth, but which was not candy.