He could not have escaped one of those calamities which
had befallen him. He could not have left undone a single act that he
had performed. There was an inexorable continuity in it all. There
had been a great game. He had been one of the pawns.
Hollister shut his eyes. Immediately, like motion pictures projected
upon a screen, his mind began to project visions. He saw himself
kissing his wife good-by. He saw the tears shining in her eyes. He
felt again the clinging pressure of her arms, her cry that she would
be so lonely. He saw himself in billets, poring over her letters. He
saw himself swinging up the line with his company, crawling back with
shattered ranks after a hammering, repeating this over and over again
till it seemed like a nightmare in which all existence was comprised
in blood and wounds and death and sorrow, enacted at stated intervals
to the rumble of guns.
He saw himself on his first leave in London, when he found that Myra
was growing less restive under his absence, when he felt proud to
think that she was learning the lesson of sacrifice and how to bear up
under it.
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