be capable of incurring the odium and the marvel of all who knew her by uniting her fate to his own, by making manifest her honor and her tenderness for him, though men saw in him only a soldier of the empire, only a base-born trooper, beneath her as Riom beneath the daughter of D’Orleans.  She was of a brave nature, of a great nature, of a daring courage, and of a superb generosity.  Abhorring dishonor, full of glory in the stainless history of her race, and tenacious of the dignity and of the magnitude of her House, she yet was too courageous and too haughty a woman not to be capable of braving calumny, if conscious of her own pure rectitude beneath it; not to be capable of incurring false censure, if encountered in the path of justice and of magnanimity.  It was possible, even on herself it dawned as possible, that so great might become her compassion and her tenderness for this man that she would, in some distant future, when the might of his love and the severity of his suffering should prevail with her, say to him: 

“Keep your secret from the world as you will.  Prove your innocence only to me; let me and the friend of your youth alone know your name and your rights.  And knowing all, knowing you myself to be hero and martyr in one, I shall not care what the world thinks of you, what the world says of me.  I will be your wife; I have lands, and riches, and honors, and greatness enough to suffice for us both.”

If ever she loved him exceedingly, she would become capable of this sacrifice from the strength, and the graciousness, and the fearlessness of her nature, and such love was not so distant from her as she thought.

Outside her tent there was a peculiar mingling of light and shadow; of darkness from the moonless and now cloud-covered sky, of reddened warmth from the tall, burning pine-boughs thrust into the soil in lieu of other illumination.  The atmosphere was hot from the flames, and chilly with the breath of the night winds; it was oppressively still, though from afar off the sounds of laughter in the camp still echoed, and near at hand the dull and steady tramp of the sentinels fell on the hard, parched soil.  Into that blended heat and cold, dead blackness and burning glare, he reeled out from her presence; drunk with pain as deliriously as men grow drunk with raki.  The challenge rang on the air: 

“Who goes there?”

He never heard it.  Even the old, long-accustomed habits of a soldier’s obedience were killed in him.

“Who goes there?” the challenge rang again.

Still he never heard, but went on blindly.  From where the tents stood there was a stronger breadth of light through which he had passed, and was passing still—­a light strong enough for it to be seen whence he came, but not strong enough to show his features.

“Halt, or I fire!” The sentinel brought the weapon to his shoulder and took a calm, close, sure aim.  He did not speak; the password he had forgotten as though he had never heard or never given it.