It was night
but the very atmosphere seemed ablaze and the dynamiting as well as the
approaching wall of fire looked very close. Finally when sparks fell on the
roof she descended hastily and awakened her guest, making him welcome to
her brother's linen as well as to a basin of precious water. When he joined
her in the kitchen he had even shaved himself and she saw that he looked
both older and younger than Americans of his age; which, he had told her,
was twenty-three. His fair well-modeled face was now composed and his hazel
eyes were brilliant and steady. He had a tall trim military body, and very
straight bright brown hair; a rather conventional figure of a well-bred
Englishman, Gora assumed; intelligent, and both more naif and more
worldly-wise than young Americans of his class: but whose potentialities
had hardly been apprehended even by himself.
They ate as substantial a breakfast as could be prepared hastily over a
spirit lamp, filled their pockets with stale bread, cake, and small tins
of food, and then carried a narrow wire mattress from one of the smaller
bedrooms to the front room on the first floor.
CHAPTER X
I
The patrol had been relieved by another, an older man, and sober. He
merely reproved them for disobeying orders, glanced sympathetically at the
presumed invalid, and directed them to one of the temporary hospitals some
blocks farther west.
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