Chapter 3

Was it a mirage? A dream? Had I gone crazy? Sobered–for a moment
forgetful of my fury–I drew back and tried to reduce the thing to
reason. Was Louis but a figment of the imagination–a phantom?

My glance fell upon the figure beside which he was sobbing incoherent
words of entreaty.

I gave a start, then looked more closely.

The dead man–for there was no question about his condition, with a
bloody shrapnel wound in the side of his head–_was myself_!

Gradually the import of this penetrated my consciousness. Then I
realized that it was Louis who had called my name–that even now he was
sobbing it over and over.

The irony of it struck me at the moment of realization. I was dead–_I_
was the phantom–who had meant to kill Louis!

I looked at my hands, my uniform–I touched my body. Apparently I was
as substantial as before the shrapnel buried itself in my head. Yet,
when I had tried to grasp Louis, my hand seemed to encompass only space.

_Louis lived, and I was dead!_

The discovery for a time benumbed my feeling toward him. With
impersonal curiosity, I saw him close the eyes of the dead man–the man
who, somehow or other, had been me. I saw him search the pockets and
draw forth a letter I had written only that morning, a letter addressed
to—-

With a sudden surge of dismay, I darted forward to snatch it from his
hands. He should not read that letter!

Again I was reminded of my impalpability.

But Louis did not open the envelope, although it was unsealed. He read
the superscription, kissed it, as sobs rent his frame, and thrust the
letter inside his khaki jacket.

“Dick! Buddie!” he cried brokenly. “Best pal man ever had–how can I
take this news back to her!”

My lips curled. To Louis, I was his pal, his buddie. Not a suspicion
of the hate I bore him–had borne him ever since I discovered in him a
rival for Velma Roth.

Oh, I had been clever! It was our “unselfish friendship” that endeared
us both to her. A sign of jealousy, of ill nature, and I would have
forfeited the paradise of her regard that apparently I shared with
Louis.

I had never felt secure of my place in that paradise. True, I could
always awaken a response in her, but I must put forth effort in order
to do so. He held her interest, it seemed, without trying. They were
happy with each other and in each other.

Our relations might be expressed by likening her to the water of a
placid pool, Louis to the basin that held her, me to the wind that
swept over it. By exerting myself, I could agitate the surface of her
nature into ripples of pleasurable excitement–could even lash her
emotion into a tempest. She responded to the stimulation of my mood,
yet, in my absence, settled contentedly into the peaceful comfort of
Louis’ steadfast love.

I felt vaguely then–and am certain now, with a broader perspective
toward realities–that Velma intuitively recognized Louis as her
mate, yet feared to yield herself to him because of my sway over her
emotional nature.

When the great war came, we all, I am convinced, felt that it would
absolve Velma from the task of choosing between us.

Whether the agony that spoke from the violet depths of her eyes when we
said good-by was chiefly for Louis or for me, I could not tell. I doubt
if she could have done so. But in my mind was the determination that
only one of us should return, and–Louis would not be that one.

Did I feel no repugnance at thought of murdering the man who stood in
my way? Very little. I was a savage at heart–a savage in whom desire
outweighed anything that might stand in the way of gaining its object.
From my point of view, I would have been a fool to pass the opportunity.

Why I should have so hated him–a mere obstacle in my path–I do not
know. It may have been due to a prescience of the intangible barrier
his blood would always raise between Velma and me–or to a slumbering
sense of remorse.

But, speculation aside, here I was, in a state of being that the world
calls death, while Louis lived–was free to return home–to claim
Velma–to flaunt his possession of all that I held precious.

It was maddening! Must I stand idly by, helpless to prevent this?

_III._

I have wondered, since, how I could remain so long in touch with the
objective world–why I did not at once, or very soon, find myself shut
off from earthly sights and sounds as those in physical form are shut
off from the things beyond.

The matter seems to have been determined by my will. Like weights of
lead, envy of Louis and passionate longing for Velma held my feet to
the sphere of dense matter.

Vengeful, despairing, I watched beside Louis. When at last he turned
away from my body and, with tears streaming from his eyes, began to
drag a useless leg toward the trenches we had left, I realized why he
had not gone on with the others to the crest of the hill. He, too, was
a victim of Boche gunnery.

I walked beside the stretcher-bearers when they had picked him up and
were conveying him toward the base hospital. Throughout the weeks that
followed I hovered near his cot, watching the doctors as they bound up
the lacerated tendons in his thigh, and missing no detail of his battle
with the fever.

Over his shoulder I read the first letter he wrote home to Velma, in
which he gave a belated account of my death, dwelling upon the glory of
my sacrifice.

“_I have often thought that you two were meant for each other_” [he
wrote] “_and that if it had not been for fear of hurting me, you would
have been his wife long ago. He was the best buddie a man ever had. If
only I could have been the one to die!_”

Had I known it, I could have followed this letter across seas–could,
in fact, have passed it and, by an exercise of the will, have been
at Velma’s side in the twinkling of an eye. But my ignorance of the
laws of the new plane was total. All my thoughts were centered upon a
problem of entirely different character.