And there is nothing further from my character: in love and in war, I am all for the forward movement; and these days of waiting made my purgatory.
It is a fact that I loved her a great deal better at the end of them, for love comes, like bread, from a perpetual rehandling.

And besides, I was fallen into a panic of fear.

How, if she came no more, how was I to continue to endure my empty days?
how was I to fall back and find my interest in the major's lessons, the lieutenant's chess, in a twopenny sale in the market, or a halfpenny addition to the prison fare?
Days went by, and weeks; I had not the courage to calculate, and to-day I have not the courage to remember; but at last she was there.

At last I saw her approach me in the company of a boy about her own age, and whom I divined at once to be her brother.
I rose and bowed in silence.
'This is my brother, Mr.Ronald Gilchrist,' said she.

'I have told him of your sufferings.