ile the Commandant with an apology
left him and strode ahead, he turned, caught sight of Diane, and
waited for her.

She came as one who cannot help herself, with panting bosom and eyes
that supplicated him for mercy. But Love, not John a Cleeve, was the
master to grant her remission--and who can supplicate Love?

They met without greeting, and for a while walked on in silence, he
with a flame in his veins and a weight of lead in his breast.

"Is papa sending you to Montreal?" she asked, scarcely above a
whisper.

"He was giving me orders when this news came."

There was a long pause now, and when next she spoke he could hardly
catch her words. "You will come again?"

His heart answered, "My love! O my love!" But he could not speak
it. He looked around upon sky, forest, sweeping river--all the
landscape of his bliss, the prison of his intolerable shame.
A fierce peremptory longing seized him to kill his bliss and his
shame at one stroke. Four words would do it. He had but to stand up
and cry aloud, "I am an Englishman!" and the whole beautiful hideous
dream would crack, shiver, dissolve. Only four words! Almost he
heard his voice shouting them and saw through the trembling heat her
body droop under the stab, her love take the mortal hurt and die with
a face of scorn. Only four words, and an end desirable as death!
What kept him silent then? He checked himself on the edge of a
horrible laugh. The thing was called Honour: and its service steeped
him in dishonour to the soul.

"You will come again?" her eyes repeated.

He commanded himself to say, "It may be that there is now no need to
go. If Fort Frontenac has fallen--"

"Why should you believe that Fort Frontenac has fallen?" she broke
in; and then, clasping her hands, added in a sort of terror, "Do you
know that--that now--I hardly seem able to think about Fort
Frontenac, or to care whether it has fallen or not? What wickedness
has come to me that I should be so cruelly selfish?"

He set his face. Even to comfort her he must not let his look or
voice soften; one touch of weakness now would send him over the
abyss.

"Let us go forward," said he. "At the next bend we shall know what
has happened."

But around the bend came a procession which told plainly enough what
had happened; a procession of boats filled with dark-coated
provincial soldiers, a few white-coats, many women and children.
No flags flew astern; the very lift of the oars to