And it had slipped.

Now the conflict had to be fought over again; the danger to be faced.

It would have been no more than natural if I had felt the disappointment keenly: if I had almost despaired.
But it was otherwise--far otherwise.

Never had my heart beat higher or more proudly than as I now hurried through the streets, avoiding such groups as were abroad in them, and intent only on observing the proper turnings.

Never in any moment of triumph in after days, in love or war, did anything like the exhilaration, the energy, the spirit, of those minutes come back to me.