“‘I hope he has not much packing to do,’ I said.”

“‘I have seen to that,’ she replied.”

“‘Then I will not intrude upon your adieux,’ I said, preparing to depart.  Ma foi, I was ready to weep, as Vaucher had wept, at the gay courage of her.  But she stopped me.”

“‘Oh, the adieux are complete like the packing,’ she said.  ’And if you should have anything further to say to Captain Bertin, you can drive with him to the station.’”

“I could see her meaning in that; my company would guard him till he left.  So I bowed.”

“‘I shall be very happy,’ I said.”

“‘Then if you will send for a fiacre,’ she suggested to her husband.  He was standing between us, wordless and dull.  He gave her a look of inquiry; she returned it with a clear, high gaze, and he went at once.”

“‘It is a good season for traveling, I believe!’ she said, when the door had closed behind him.”

“‘Captain Bertin could not have chosen a better,’ I assured her.”

“Her composure was more than wonderful; by no sign, no hint of weakness or ill ease, did she make any appeal to me.  To my sympathy, my admiration, my devotion, she offered only that bright surface of her schooled manner and disciplined emotions.  While her house crumbled about her ears, while her world failed her, she deviated not a hairbreadth from the line of social amenity.”

“‘But he is hardly likely to have company?’ she asked again.”

“As for me, I had visions of the kind of company that was due to him —­a formal sons-officer with a warrant of arrest, a file of stolid soldiers, with rigid faces and curious eyes.”

“But I answered her in her own manner.”

“‘There is certainly that drawback,’ I said, and I thought—­I hoped—­ I saw gratitude in her answering look.”

“Then Bertin returned, with the hat of a civilian and a cloak that covered him to the ears.  I saw their farewell—­his look of appeal at her, the smile of amusement which answered it.  And next I was seated beside him in the fiacre and she was framed in the door, looking after us, slender and erect, pale and subtle, smiling still with a manner as of weariness.  It is thus that I remember her best.”

“It was not till we were out of her sight that Bertin spoke.  He lit a cigarette and stared up at the great white stars.”

“‘She spoilt my luck from the first,’ he said.”

“I don’t know why, but I laughed.  At the moment it seemed to be a very droll saying.  And at the sound of my laughter he grinned in sympathy.  He was a wonderful man.  When he was established in the train, he held out his hand to me.”

“‘Adieu,’ he said.  ’You have been kind in your way.  You didn’t do it for me, you know—­so adieu!”

“I took his hand.  It was a small thing to grant him, and I bad no other answer.  As the train moved away, I saw his face at the window of the carriage, full of a kind of sly humor—­gross, amiable, and tragic!  He waved me a good-bye.”