Fired by a sublime
enthusiasm for his country; thirsting to drink of any cup her hand might
present, that thus he might display his absolute devotion to her cause;
burning with indignation at the wrongs she had suffered; thrilled with
an adoring love for the idea she embodied; eager to make manifest this
love at whatever cost of pain and sorrow and suffering to
himself,--through all this the man never once was steeped in
forgetfulness in the soldier; the divine passion of patriotism never
once dulled the ache, or satisfied the desire, or answered the prayer,
or filled the longing heart, that through the day marches and the night
watches cried, and would not be appeased, for his darling.
"Surely," he thought as he went down Broadway, as he reflected, as he
considered the matter a thousand times thereafter,--"surely I was a fool
not to have spoken to her then; not to have seen her, have devised, have
forced some way to reach her, not to have met her face to face, and told
her all the love with which she had filled my heart and possessed my
soul. And then to have been such a coward when I did write to her, to
have so said a say which was nothing"; and he groaned impatiently as he
thought of the scene in his room and the letter which was its final
result.
How he had written once, and again, and yet again, letters short and
long, letters short and burning, or lengthy and filled almost to the
final line with delicate fancies and airy sentiment, ere he ventured to
tell that of which all this was but the prelude; how, at the conclusion
of each attempt, he had watched these luminous effusions blaze and burn
as he regularly committed them to the flames; how he found it difficult
to decide which he enjoyed the most,--writing them out, or seeing them
burn; how at last he had put upon paper some such words as these:--
"After these delightful weeks and months of intercourse, I am to go away
from you, then, without a single word of parting, or a solitary sentence
of adieu.
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