He looked out the window at the
little, changing group. In each man out there there was something
that would live on, after he had shed that sweating, often dirty,
always weary, sometimes malformed shell that was the body. And
then the thing that would count would be not how he had lived but
what he had done.
This war was a big thing. It was the biggest thing in all the
history of the world. There might be, perhaps, some special heaven
for those who had given themselves to it, some particular honorable
advancement for their souls. Already he saw Jackson as one apart,
a man dedicated.
Then he knew that all his thinking was really centered about his
boy. He wanted Graham to go. But in giving him he was giving him
to the chance of death. Then he must hold to his belief in
eternity. He must feel that, or the thing would be unbearable.
For the first time in his life he gave conscious thought to
Natalie's religious belief. She believed in those things. She
must. She sat devoutly through the long service; she slipped, with
a little rustle of soft silk, so easily to her knees.
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