I want you to know that. I have seen to financial matters, my wife will be taken care of, and I think she will be relieved not to have to deal with me. The nightmares are worse, and encroaching deafness from the guns is a frightful thing. It isolates a person, and I was already isolated. My wife must shout at me to ask the simplest questions, and even so I can barely hear her voice. Tenderness is impossible, and she sleeps in another room now so that I won't keep her awake with my tossing and turning and the screams I don't remember in the morning, but she does. We hardly knew each other when we married in 1914, and we never had a chance to build that common ground that might have seen us through. I'm tired, Ian, I can't tell you how tired. And this is the only way to peace I can see. Forgive me, if you can. Pray for me if you will. But know that I will be happier out of this misery, and I have not decided that lightly. Fare thee well, my friend. I hope that you will see your way clear where I have not. You didn't marry your Jean after all, and that may be your salvation. I have watched someone I believed I loved more than life itself withdraw a little more each day, until there's only hurt and confusion left. It would break my heart, if it weren't already broken. So good-bye, and may God have mercy on both of us.

It was signed Max.

Rutledge stared at the letter in his hand, and then slowly reread it. It was dated two days ago. Too late. Far too late.

Maxwell Hume had been a captain of artillery whom Rutledge had come to know well at the start of the war. A career man, he was an experienced and able officer, liked by his troops and his superiors. Early in the war, the two men had shared their first leave, staying in a shell of a chateau, unable to find transportation to Paris or London-five days where their friendship had been cemented with laughter and more than a little wine salvaged from the destroyed cellars.