She was hedged about by all the stern and cold machinery of an
Army Post, out of whose calculations I was left as much as though I
belonged to a different world. I cannot express what this meant for me.
For weeks now, for months, indeed, we two had been together each hour of
the day. I had come to expect her greeting in the morning, to turn to
her a thousand times in the day with some query or answer. I had made no
plan from which she was absent. I had come to accept myself, with her,
as fit part of an appointed and happy scheme. Now, in a twinkling, all
that had been subverted. I was robbed of her exquisite dependence upon
me, of those tender defects of nature that rendered her most dear. I was
to miss now her fineness, her weakness and trustfulness, which had been
a continual delight. I could no longer see her eyes nor touch her hands,
nor sit silent at her feet, dreaming of days to come. Her voice was gone
from my listening ears. Always I waited to hear her footstep, but it
came no longer, rustling in the grasses. It seemed to me that by some
hard decree I had been deprived of all my senses; for not one was left
which did not crave and cry aloud for her.
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