n his side--with a playful turn of the phrase concealing the profound
trouble of his whole being caused by her inaccessible nearness. Late in
the afternoon General D'Hubert walked home between the fields of vines,
sometimes intensely miserable, sometimes supremely happy, sometimes
pensively sad, but always feeling a special intensity of existence: that
elation common to artists, poets, and lovers, to men haunted by a great
passion, by a noble thought or a new vision of plastic beauty.

The outward world at that time did not exist with any special
distinctness for General D'Hubert. One evening, however, crossing a
ridge from which he could see both houses, General D'Hubert became aware
of two figures far down the road. The day had been divine. The festal
decoration of the inflamed sky cast a gentle glow on the sober tints
of the southern land. The gray rocks, the brown fields, the purple
undulating distances harmonised in luminous accord, exhaled already
the scents of the evening. The two figures down the road presented
themselves like two rigid and wooden silhouettes all black on the ribbon
of white dust. General D'Hubert made out the long, straight-cut military
_capotes_, buttoned closely right up to the black stocks, the cocked
hats, the lean carven brown countenances--old soldiers--_vieilles
moustaches!_ The taller of the two had a black patch over one eye;
the other's hard, dry countenance presented some bizarre disquieting
peculiarity which, on nearer approach, proved to be the absence of the
tip of the nose. Lifting their hands with one movement to salute the
slightly lame civilian walking with a thick stick, they inquired for the
house where the General Baron D'Hubert lived and what was the best way
to get speech with him quietly.

"If you think this quiet enough," said General D'Hubert, looking round
at the ripening vine-fields framed in purple lines and dominated by the
nest of gray and drab walls of a village clustering around the top of a
steep, conical hill, so that the blunt church tower seemed but the shape
of a crowning rock--"if you think this quiet enough you can speak to
him at once. And I beg you, comrades, to speak openly with perfect
confidence."

They stepped back at this and raised again their hands to their hats
with marked ceremoniousness. Then the one with the chipped nose,
speaking for both, remarked that the matter was confidential enough and
to be arranged discreetly. Their general quarter