Doctor Duffey had called, the afternoon before, and had delivered himself of sundry philippics on the subject of army surgeons before he arranged for medicines. There were two vials of sedative pills, a bottle of tonic and one of a magnesia compound. Ty was to take the tonic daily, the magnesia before each meal, and the pills as needed.

He worked briskly, silently, packing these articles with clean handkerchiefs and socks, and adding two boxes of cigars and some wine. The knapsack was one presented to him by a German officer during the first months of his service; it was of lightweight russet leather, and bore a tooled eagle crest on the flap.

From the top of the hall stairway, his wife looked down at him. She stood without speaking, rubbing her hands back and forth on the polished mahogany of the railing. It was impossible for her to admit any kinship, even flimsy and merely marital, with the slim man who bent above that knapsack in the lower corridor. Sunlight crept through diamonds of pink and gold glass beside the front door, and made smoky dabs of color on the deep, brownish purple of his blouse and the faded blue of his breeches.

There had been no sexual relation between them for more than a year … Irene Fanning wondered, in this dry moment, if ever the taint of raw sex had existed in their physical union. In the first year of their marriage her mind was pulsing with a fever of expectancy. (This was the epoch of braided jackets and red-striped bloomers; the Seventy-second were still Fire Zouaves, and they dreamed of an heraldic war ornate as the flash of their white gaiters.) A five-day honeymoon, two furloughs: this is it, she had thought each time, maybe this will be the hour. Now the notion of any fulfillment was a tired wraith to be chased out of mind and forgotten whenever possible.

She did not despise her husband for his impotency. Rather an emotional pity had come to possess her: wounded … a piece of metal driven squarely through the lining of his body … think of it, inside, inside, where all is soft and warm and wet and a part of honest nature. That awful intrusion had saved a sympathy for him which otherwise would never have been born.

She called, “Did you get those socks off the bureau?”

He lifted his face; wooden check-bones, thick mustache. “I didn’t want them all. Just the wool. Three pairs.”

“Didn’t you want any writing paper?”

“I’ve got all I need at camp. No use lugging any more of the damn stuff with me.”