A CHARMED LIFE     

  

       by Richard Harding Davis     

   

    

       She loved him so, that when he went away to a little war in which his country was interested she could not understand, nor quite forgive.     

       As the correspondent of a newspaper, Chesterton had looked on at other wars; when the yellow races met, when the infidel Turk spanked the Christian Greek; and one he had watched from inside a British square, where he was greatly alarmed lest he should be trampled upon by terrified camels. This had happened before he and she had met. After they met, she told him that what chances he had chosen to take before he came into her life fell outside of her jurisdiction. But now that his life belonged to her, this talk of his standing up to be shot at was wicked. It was worse than wicked; it was absurd.     

       When the Maine sank in Havana harbor and the word “war” was appearing hourly in hysterical extras, Miss Armitage explained her position.     

       “You mustn’t think,” she said, “that I am one of those silly girls who would beg you not to go to war.”      

       At the moment of speaking her cheek happened to be resting against his, and his arm was about her, so he humbly bent his head and kissed her, and whispered very proudly and softly, “No, dearest.”      

       At which she withdrew from him frowning.     

       “No! I’m not a bit like those girls,” she proclaimed. “I merely tell you YOU CAN’T GO! My gracious!” she cried, helplessly. She knew the words fell short of expressing her distress, but her education had not supplied her with exclamations of greater violence.     

       “My goodness!” she cried. “How can you frighten me so? It’s not like you,”        she reproached 

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