"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. For months and months and months he
seemed only a bundle of exposed nerves--that is, where he had any movement
or sensation at all.

Now a past, however escutcheoned and fame-enrolled, is even more starvation
diet than a future of affection and self-confidence. No help was to be had
from either of their homes; it was the day of self-help for all.

Bessie wondered why this had been sent on _her_, but she took a couple of
boarders at once, she sold sponge-cake and beaten biscuit, she got up
classes in bread-making. And Guy stopped her busy passing to draw her hand
to his lips, or watched her with dumb eyes.

Several of her friends, after trying her sewing-machine, then still