The strangeness of his answering voice only repeated the stab of fear. She
was on her feet, had made a light....
He was not suffering any more. He was perfectly conscious and rational. But
from the waist down he could not move nor feel.
The doctors came and talked a great deal and said little; they reminded
them that not much was known of this sort of thing; they would be glad to
do what they could....
"You don't mean to say this is permanent? Paralyzed? I? Oh, absurd!" Awful
things happened to other people, of course--scandal, death--but to one's
self--"Oh, it doesn't sound true! It can't be true. Paralyzed? _I_?"
And Bessie wondered why this had been sent on _her_.
The explanation was hit on long afterward, when in one of his campaign
stories Guy mentioned a fall from his horse, with his spine against a rock,
that had laid him unconscious for twenty-two hours.
And so the war, which had been responsible for their starting together with
only a past and a future, was responsible for their having shortly only a
past. Guy was not allowed his ten years.
Though he had now less actual pain, the shock seemed to jar the foundations
of his life, and the sharp change in the habits of an active and vigorous
body seemed to wreck his whole system.
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