The nobler woman instinct is apt to be armed by nature for defensive warfare.  If she has imagination, she has in hours of doubt some sense of humiliation in the vast surrender of marriage.  This accounts for certain of the cases of celibate women, who miss the complete life and have no ready traitor within the guarded fortress to open the way to love.  Some such instinctive limitations beset Leila Grey.  The sorrow of a great, a nearer and constant affection came to her aid.  To think of anything like love, even if again it questioned her, was out of the question while before her eyes James Penhallow was fading in mind.

John Penhallow was shortly relieved by McGregor’s order that he should get some exercise.  It enabled him to escape the early surgical visit and the diverse odours of surgical dressings which lingered in the long ward while breakfast was being served.  There were more uneasy sleepers than he in the ward and much pain, and crippled men with little to look forward to.  The suffering he saw and could not lessen had been for John one of the depressing agencies of this hospital life.  The ward was quiet when he awoke at dawn of April 13th.  He quickly summoned an orderly and endured the daily humiliation of being dressed like a baby.  He found Josiah waiting with the camp-chair at the door as he came out of the ward.

“How you feeling, Master John?”

“Rather better.  What time is it?  That Reb stole my watch.”  Even yet it was amusing.  He laughed at the remembrance of having been relieved by the prisoners of purse and watch.

For Josiah to extract his own watch was as McGregor said something like a surgical operation.  “It’s not goin’, Master John.  It’s been losing time—­like it wasn’t accountable.  What’s it called watch for if it don’t watch?”

This faintly amused John.  He said no more, but sat enjoying the early morning quiet, the long hazy reaches of the James River, the awakening of life here and there, and the early stir among the gun-boats.

“Get me some coffee, Josiah,” he said.  “I am like your watch, losing time and everything else.”

Josiah stood over him.  His unnatural depression troubled a simple mind made sensitive by a limitless affection and dog-like power to feel without comprehending the moods of the master.

“Captain John, you was sayin’ to me yesterday you was most unfortunate.  I just went away and kept a kind of thinkin’ about it.”

“Well, what conclusion did you come to?” He spoke wearily.

“Oh, I just wondered if you’d like to change with me—­guess you wouldn’t for all the pain?”

Surprised at the man’s reflection, John looked up at the black kindly face.  “Get me some coffee.”

“Yes, sir—­what’s that?” The morning gun rang out the sunrise hour.  “What’s that, sir?” The flag was being hoisted on the slope below them.  “It’s stopped at half-mast, sir!  Who’s dead now?”