eeded and who needed her.

He was too wise to speak or move; he loved her too much to touch
again the hair, flung heavily across her face--to touch her
flushed brow, her clasped hands, her slender body, delicate and
warm, firm yet yielding. He waited for the tears to come. And
when they fell, one by one, great, hot drops, they brought no
relief until she told him all--all--her last and inmost hope and
fear.

Then when her white soul lay naked in all its innocence before
him, and when the last word had been said, he raised her head
and searched in her pure eyes for one message of love for
himself.

It was not there; and the last word had been said.

And, even as he looked, holding her there almost in his arms, the
Prussian trumpets clanged from the dim meadows and the drums
thundered on the hills, and the invading army roused itself at
the dawn of another day.

XVIII

THE STRETCHING OF NECKS

For two days and nights the German army passed through Morteyn
and Saint-Lys, on the march towards Metz. All day long the hills
struck back the echoes of their flat brass drums, and shook with
the shock of armed squadrons, tramping on into the west.
Interminable trains of wagons creaked along the sandy Saint-Avold
road; the whistle of the locomotive was heard again at Saint-Lys,
where the Bavarians had established a base of supplies and were
sending their endless, multicoloured trains puffing away towards
Saarbrueck for provisions and munitions of war that had arrived
there from Cologne. Generals with their staffs, serious, civil
fellows, with anxious, near-sighted eyes, stopped at the Chateau
and were courteously endured, only to be replaced by others
equally polite and serious. And regularly, after each batch left
with their marching regiments, there came back to the Chateau by
courier, the same evening, a packet of visiting-cards and a
polite letter signed by all the officers entertained, thanking
the Vicomte and Madame de Morteyn for their hospitality.

At last, on the 10th of August, about five o'clock in the
afternoon, the last squadron of the rear-guard cantered over the
hills west of Morteyn, and the last straggling Uhlan followed
after, twirling his long lance.

Every day Lorraine had watched and waited for one word from her
father; every day Jack had ridden over to the Chateau de
Nesville, but the marquis refused to see him or to listen to any
message, nor did he send any to Lorraine.

Old Pierre t