ay, didn't
you? What do you think now?"

"I think, my dear," said I, with a hand on her forehead, "that you are
marrying a very gallant English gentleman of whose love any woman in
the land might be proud."

She clutched me round the neck and brought her young face near
mine--and looked at me--I hesitate to say it,--but so it
seemed,--somewhat haggardly.

"I love to hear you say that, it means so much to me. Don't think I
haven't a sense of proportion. I have. In all this universal slaughter
and massacre, a woman's life counts as much as that of a mosquito." She
freed an arm and snapped her fingers. "But to the woman herself, her
own life can't help being of some value. Such as it is, I want to give
it all, every bit of it, to Willie. He shall have everything,
everything, everything that I can give him."

I looked into the young, drawn, pleading face long and earnestly. No
longer was I mystified. I remembered her talk with me a couple of days
before, and I read her riddle.

She had struck gold. She knew it. Gold of a man's love. Gold of a man's
strength. Gold of a man's honour. Gold of a man's stainless past. Gold
of a man's radiant future. And though she wore the mocking face and
talked the mocking words of the woman who expected such a man to "eat
out of her hand," she knew that never out of her hand would he eat save
that which she should give him in honourable and wifely service. She
knew that. She was exquisitely anxious that I should know it too.
Floodgates of relief were expressed when she saw that I knew it. Not
that I, personally, counted a scrap. What she craved was a decent human
soul's justification of her doings. She craved recognition of her
action in casting away base metal forever and taking the pure gold to
her heart.

"Tell me that I am doing the right thing, dear," she said, "and
to-morrow I'll be the happiest woman in the world."

And I told her, in the most fervent manner in my power.

"You quite understand?" she said, standing up, looking very young and
princess-like, her white throat gleaming between her furs and up-turned
chin.

"You will find, my dear," said I, "that the significance of your Dead
March of a Marionette will increase every day of your married life."

She stiffened in a sudden stroke of passion, looking, for the instant,
electrically beautiful.

"I wish," she cried, "someone had written the Dead March of a Devil."

She bent down, kissed me, and went out in a whirr o