“Will you refuse to fight?” asked Mae, and her heart, which had been white with fear for Norman the second before, flashed now with quick, red scorn.  Even the Huguenot maiden would, after all, have despised her lover if he had quietly allowed her to tie the white handkerchief to his arm.  Believe it, she loved him far, far better as she clung to him, pressed closely to his warm, living heart, because she realized in an agony that his honor was strong enough to burst even the tender bonds of her dear love, and that he would break from her round arms to rush into that ghostly, ghastly death-embrace on the morrow, at the dreadful knell of St. Bartholomew bells.

Suppose he had yielded.  Suppose we saw him in the picture standing quietly, unresistingly, as her soft fingers bound the white badge, that meant protection and life, to his arm.  Would not she, as well as he, have known that it was a badge of cowardice, and that he wore a heart as white?

And afterwards, would she have loved the living man, breathing in air heavy with the hearts’ life of his brothers and friends, as she worshiped the dead man, whose cold body rested forever down deep in mother earth’s brown, soft bosom, but whose very life of life swelled the great throng of heroes and martyrs who have closed their own eyes upon life’s pictures, that those pictures might shine clearer and brighter to other eyes?

If the man had yielded, and the picture showed him thus, would we see the Huguenot lovers adorning half the houses of the land?  Most often they are found in that particular corner of the home belonging to some maiden—­that sacred room of her own, where she prays her prayers, and lives her most secret life.  I have often wondered at the many girls who hang that especial picture over their fire-places.  It must be a case of unconscious ideality.  They realize that love must be so subject to honor that heart-strings would break for the sake of that honor, if need be, even though the harmonious love-song of two hearts is hushed; and what is the love-song of any two beings compared to a life-song of honor for the world—­those wonderful life-songs that we all know?  One of them sings itself so loudly to me now, over ages of romance and history, that I must let my simple story wait and give way to it for a minute.

There was a man who lived once.  If God did not create him, Homer did.  The Oracle told him that the first man who put foot on the Trojan shores would die.  He knew this before he started on his voyage for Greece.  He left a wife and home behind him, whom he dearly loved.  I wonder if he used to pace the deck of the rich barge, and listen to the men chatting around him, and smile as they planned of returning, proud and victorious, to their homes and their wives.

All the while under his smile he knew he was to die, not in the glory of fight, although his sword swung sharp and bright at his side, in any thrilling fashion, to be sung of and wept of by his fellows.