A gust of bitter passion swept over my darling. He started up. 'Rascally rebels!' he cried; 'cursed bullets! Why couldn't they have been aimed at my heart, and _killed_ me! I was willing to give my life--but to make a wreck, a broken hull of me! Look at me, Maggie, a poor, maimed wretch. What am I fit for? Who will care for me _now?_ To be an object of loathing!' he continued, between his set teeth; 'to be a sight of horror; to win, perhaps, after she gets used to the deformity, a little meagre love for charity's sake; to be scorned, and loathed, and pitied; if I could get only off from the face of the earth--out of the sight of men; if God would let me die!' Wounded sorely as he was, his boyish vanity in his really handsome person, his manly pride in its strength, was more sorely wounded still. Yes, strangers _would_ think him a sight to behold: had not even I turned shuddering from that disfigured form, before I knew it was my darling's? He _was_ ruined for life, and he was young too--only nineteen. He was very weak, and this passionate outbreak of feeling had exhausted him. It was but a flash of his old fire at best. His head sank back upon my arm again; he lay with his eyes closed, resting for a little; when he spoke again, his voice was low and wavering, tremulous with tears.
'I wouldn't care so much, only----' He paused, hesitated, drew with difficulty a little locket from his bosom, and gazed upon it tearfully. A jealous pain shot through my heart. I had thought until that moment that I was all in all to him, first in his affections, as he was in mine; that no rival shared his heart. _This_ was the bitterest pang of all. I looked down at the beautiful face set in the locket, perfect as to form and color, with such a fierce hatred of its original as I hope in God's name I shall never feel again for any mortal breathing.
'It's all over between us,' he sighed; 'even if I were ungenerous enough to ask it, she wouldn't receive me now.' My face spoke my scorn. 'Don't blame her,' he said, pathetically; 'it isn't natural she should, poor little thing! This for what she might have been to me.' Then, he kissed the pictured face, and sorrowfully laid it back again upon his heart. 'I thought to go back to her a colonel at least--a general, perhaps,' he went on, with a piteous smile; 'to be crowned with laurels, loaded with honors and proudly claim her as my bride: I little thought that this would be the end!' It was a man's grave comment on a boy's wild dream. He had buried his youth in those two weeks of anguish. It was a man's face that looked upon me, and I read in it a man's strong endurance and stern resolve. That, and the smile with which he said it, moved me more than any emotion, however hopeless or despairing, could have done. My grief burst forth anew.