"We must not think of his dying," he said. "We must only think
that he is going to live, and to come back to us, Natalie dear."
She flung off the arm he put around her.
"And that," he went on, feeling for words out of the dreadful
confusion in his mind, "if - the worst comes, that he has done a
magnificent thing. There is no greater thing, Natalie."
"That won't bring him back to us," she said, still in that frozen
voice. And suddenly she burst into hard, terrible crying.
All that night he sat outside her door, for she would not allow him
to come in. He had had Washington on the telephone, but when at
last he got the connection it was to learn that no further details
were known. Toward dawn there came the official telegram from the
War Department, but it told nothing more.
Natalie was hysterical. He had sent for a doctor, and with
Madeleine in attendance the medical man had worked over her for
hours. Going out, toward morning, he had found Clayton in the
hall and had looked at him sharply.
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