I have been what I chose.

I can be what I will." A gracious phantom grew under his eyes taking exquisite shape before him; and dim-eyed, he stared at it till it dwindled, faded, dissolved into empty air and sunshine.
No; he could never marry without revealing what he was; and that he would never do because of loyalty to that tender ghost which he must shield for ever even as he would have shielded her in life.
No living soul had any right to know.

No love of his for any woman could ever justify betrayal of what alone concerned the dead.
The shells, which, short fused, had been bursting high above the swamp to the right, suddenly began to fall nearer the cavalry, and after a while a shell exploded among them, killing a horse.
They retired by squadrons, leisurely, and in good order; but the shells followed them, searching them out and now and then finding them with a deafening racket and cloud of smoke, out of which mangled horses reared, staggered, and rolled over screaming; out of which a rider, here and there was hurled sideways, head first, or sent spinning and headless among his white-faced comrades.
McDunn's guns had opened now, attempting to extinguish the fire of the troublesome Confederate battery.

Berkley, teeth set, pallid, kept his place in the ranks, and hung to his horse's head until he got the animal calmed again.

One of his sleeves was covered with blood from a comrade's horse, blown into fragments beside him.
He could see McDunn's gunners working methodically amid the vapours steaming back from the battery as it fired by sections; saw the guns jump, buried in smoke; saw the long flames flicker, flicker, flicker through the cannon mist; felt the solid air strike him in the face at each discharge.
Hallam, white as a sheet, stood motionless at the head of his troop; a shell had just burst, but it was as though he dared not look back until Colonel Arran rode slowly over to the stricken company--and saw Berkley still standing at his horse's head, and gave him a look that the younger man never forgot.
Again, by troops, the Lancers retired; and again the yelling shells found them, and they retired to the base of a hill.