Every day two or three of them join up. Some
days I almost make up my mind to do it--and then I see myself thrusting
a bayonet through another man--some woman's husband or sweetheart or
son--perhaps the father of little children--I see myself lying alone
torn and mangled, burning with thirst on a cold, wet field, surrounded
by dead and dying men--and I know I never can. I can't face even the
thought of it. How could I face the reality? There are times when I wish
I had never been born. Life has always seemed such a beautiful thing to
me--and now it is a hideous thing. Rilla-my-Rilla, if it weren't for
your letters--your dear, bright, merry, funny, comical, believing
letters--I think I'd give up. And Una's! Una is really a little brick,
isn't she? There's a wonderful fineness and firmness under all that shy,
wistful girlishness of her. She hasn't your knack of writing
laugh-provoking epistles, but there's something in her letters--I don't
know what--that makes me feel at least while I'm reading them, that I
could even go to the front. Not that she ever says a word about my going
--or hints that I ought to go--she isn't that kind. It's just the
spirit of them--the personality that is in them. Well, I can't go. You
have a brother and Una has a friend who is a coward."
"Oh, I wish Walter wouldn't write such things," sighed Rilla. "It hurts
me. He isn't a coward--he isn't--he isn't!"
She looked wistfully about her--at the little woodland valley and the
grey, lonely fallows beyond.
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