"
"To go into every battle with the sentence of death hanging over you; to
know that if you are anywhere captured, anyhow made prisoner, you are
condemned to die,--O Willie, I can't bear it; I can't bear it! I shall
die, or go mad, to carry such a thought all the time."
For answer he only held her close, with his face resting upon her hair,
and in the stillness they could hear each other's heart beat.
"It is God's service," he said, at last.
"I know."
"It will end slavery and the war more effectually than aught else."
"I know."
"It will make these freedmen, wherever they fight, free men. It will
give them and their people a sense of dignity and power that might
otherwise take generations to secure."
"I know."
"And I. Both feeling and knowing this, who so fit to yield and to do for
such a cause? If those who see do not advance, the blind will never
walk."
Silence for a space again fell between them. Francesca moved in his arm.
"Dearie." She looked up. "I want to do no half service. I go into this
heart and soul, but I do not wish to go alone. It will be so much to me
to know that you are quite willing, and bade me go. Think what it is."
She did. For an instant all sacrifices appeared easy, all burdens light.
She could send him out to death unfaltering. One of those sublime moods
in which martyrdom seems glorious filled and possessed her.
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