thrown her into a mood of reckless self-sacrifice.  And when she looked up into his face that night of the parting, he felt her looking into his soul and seeing his shame that he had lost his love because he had lost himself, and she was quite right to turn from him, as she did, without another word.  Already, however, he was healthy enough to believe that he was not quite so hopeless as she must think him—­not as hopeless as he had thought himself.  Life, now, with even a soldier’s work, was far from being as worthless as life with a gentleman’s idleness had been.  He was honest enough to take no credit for the clean change in his life—­no other life was possible; but he was learning the practical value and mental comfort of straight living as he had never learned them before.  And he was not so prone to metaphysics and morbid self-examination as he once was, and he shook off a mood of that kind when it came—­impatiently—­as he shook it off now.  He was a soldier now, and his province was action and no more thought than his superiors allowed him.  And, standing thus, at sunrise, on the plunging bow of the ship, with his eager, sensitive face splitting the swift wind—­he might have stood to any thoughtful American who knew his character and his history as a national hope and a national danger.  The nation, measured by its swift leap into maturity, its striking power to keep going at the same swift pace, was about his age.  South, North, and West it had lived, or was living, his life.  It had his faults and his virtues; like him, it was high-spirited, high-minded, alert, active, manly, generous, and with it, as with him, the bad was circumstantial, trivial, incipient; the good was bred in the Saxon bone and lasting as rock—­if the surface evil were only checked in time and held down.  Like him, it needed, like a Titan, to get back, now and then, to the earth to renew its strength.  And the war would send the nation to the earth as it would send him, if he but lived it through.

There was little perceptible change in the American officer and soldier, now that the work was about actually to begin.  A little more soberness was apparent.  Everyone was still simple, natural, matter-of-fact.  But that night, doubtless, each man dreamed his dream.  The West Point stripling saw in his empty shoulder-straps a single bar, as the man above him saw two tiny bars where he had been so proud of one.  The Captain led a battalion, the Major charged at the head of a thousand strong; the Colonel plucked a star, and the Brigadier heard the tramp of hosts behind him.  And who knows how many bold spirits leaped at once that night from acorns to stars; and if there was not more than one who saw himself the war-god of the anxious nation behind—­saw, maybe, even the doors of the White House swing open at the conquering sound of his coming feet.  And, through the dreams of all, waved aimlessly the mighty wand of the blind master—­Fate—­giving death to a passion for glory here; disappointment bitter as death to a noble ambition there; and there giving unsought fame where was indifference to death; and then, to lend substance to the phantom of just deserts, giving a mortal here and there the exact fulfilment of his dream.