“Mes Francais!  That was a foolish word of mine.  How many of my bravest have fallen in death; and shall I be afraid of what they welcomed?  Do not grieve like that.  You could not help it; you were doing your duty.  If the shots had not come to me, they would have gone to him; and he has been unhappy so long, and borne wrong so patiently, he has earned the right to live and enjoy.  Now I—­I have been happy all my days, like a bird, like a kitten, like a foal, just from being young and taking no thought.  I should have had to suffer if I had lived.  It is much best as it is——­”

Her voice failed her when she had spoken the heroic words; loss of blood was fast draining all strength from her, and she quivered in a torture she could not wholly conceal.  He for whom she perished hung over her in an agony greater far than hers.  It seemed a hideous dream to him that this child lay dying in his stead.

“Can nothing save her?” he cried aloud.  “O God! that you had fired one moment sooner!”

She heard; and looked up at him with a look in which all the passionate, hopeless, imperishable love she had resisted and concealed so long spoke with an intensity she never dreamed.

“She is content,” she whispered softly.  “You did not understand her rightly; that was all.”

“All!  O God, how I have wronged you!”

The full strength, and nobility, and devotion of this passion he had disbelieved in and neglected rushed on him as he met her eyes; for the first time he saw her as she was; for the first time he saw all of which the splendid heroism of this untrained nature would have been capable under a different fate.  And it struck him suddenly, heavily, as with a blow; it filled him with a passion of remorse.

“My darling! my darling! what have I done to be worthy of such love?” he murmured while the tears fell from his blinded eyes, and his head drooped until his lips met hers.  At the first utterance of that word between them, at the unconscious tenderness of his kisses that had the anguish of a farewell in them, the color suddenly flushed all over her blanched face; she trembled in his arms; and a great, shivering sigh ran through her.  It came too late, this warmth of love.  She learned what its sweetness might have been only when her lips grew numb, and her eyes sightless, and her heart without pulse, and her senses without consciousness.

“Hush!” she answered, with a look that pierced his soul.  “Keep those kisses for Milady.  She will have the right to love you; she is of your ‘aristocrats,’ she is not ‘unsexed.’  As for me—­I am only a little trooper who has saved my comrade!  My soldiers, come round me one instant; I shall not long find words.”

Her eyes closed as she spoke; a deadly faintness and coldness passed over her; and she gasped for breath.  A moment, and the resolute courage in her conquered; her eyes opened and rested on the war-worn faces of her “children”—­rested in a long, last look of unspeakable wistfulness and tenderness.