One by one the lights in the hospital had been extinguished; a lantern glimmered at the guard-house; here and there an illuminated window cast its oblong of paler light across the grass.

Southward the crimson radiance had died out; softened echoes of distant gunshots marked the passing of the slow, dark hours, but the fitful picket firing was now no louder than the deadened stamp of horses in their stalls.
A faint scent of jasmine hung in the air, making it fresher, though no breeze stirred.
He stood for a while, face upturned to the stars, then his head fell.

Sabre trailing, he moved slowly out into the open; and, at random, wandered into the little lane that led darkly down under green bushes to Letty's bridge.
It was fresher and cooler in the lane; starlight made the planking of the little foot-bridge visible in the dark, but the stream ran under it too noiselessly for him to hear the water moving over its bed of velvet sand.
A startled whippoorwill flashed into shadowy night from the rail as he laid his hand upon it, and, searching for the seat which Letty's invalid had built for her, he sank down, burying his head in his hands.
And, as he sat there, a vague shape, motionless in the starlight, stirred, moved silently, detaching itself from the depthless wall of shadow.
There was a light step on the grass, a faint sound from the bridge.
But he heard nothing until she sank down on the flooring at his feet and dropped her head, face downward, on his knees.
As in a dream his hands fell from his eyes--fell on her shoulders, lay heavily inert.
"Ailsa ?" Her feverish face quivered, hiding closer; one small hand searched blindly for his arm, closed on his sleeve, and clung there.

He could feel her slender body tremble at intervals, under his lips, resting on her hair, her breath grew warm with tears.
She lay there, minute after minute, her hand on his sleeve, slipping, tightening, while her tired heart throbbed out its heavy burden on his knees, and her tears fell under the stars.
Fatigued past all endurance, shaken, demoralised, everything in her was giving way now.

She only knew that he had come to her out of the night's deathly desolation--that she had crept to him for shelter, was clinging to him.