should say, according to his mood.

I used to think in those days that he never willfully wronged any one,
but I had to own also that he never deliberately sacrificed himself
for any one. And, if I were the victim of his temperament, he was no
less so. But he was an artist. I was not. All things either good or
bad were merely material to him. With me it was different.

He and I were alone in the world. But beside us marched, that May
morning, with the glory of youth on his handsome but weak face, one
whose "baptism of fire" was to make him a hero, who had else been
remembered a coward.

The story of the girl he had wronged, and fear of whom had even
reconciled his family to his enlisting, was common property, and had
been for several seasons. There was a child, too, a little daughter,
fondly loved, but unacknowledged, the fame of whose childish beauty
many a heedless voice had already sung.

He, poor youngster, looked on his all that morning.

Once more I saw the flag draped house where his mother waved a brave
farewell to him.

But there was another later picture in my mind. Again I heard the
blare of the band before us as it flung its satire of "The Girl I Left
Behind Me," into the spring air. I saw once more in my mind the child,
with her floating red gold curls, raised above the crowd on the
shoulders of tall men. Her eyes were too young for tears--and for that
matter, tears came to her but seldom in later years--and the lips that