thought to himself, "until the day of my
death. Perhaps they may not have quite withered by then."

CHAPTER XLII.

A COMMUNICATION.

Now, he said to himself, he would think no more; he would act. The long
talk with Lord Evelyn had enabled him to pull himself together; there
would be no repetition of that half-hysterical collapse. More than one
of his officer-friends had confessed to him that they had spent the
night before their first battle in abject terror, but that that had all
gone off as soon as they were called into action. And as for himself, he
had many things to arrange before starting on this hunting-expedition,
which was to serve as a cloak for another enterprise. He would have to
write at once, for example, to his sister--an invalid widow, who passed
her life alternately on the Riviera and in Switzerland--informing her of
his intended travels. He would have to see that a sufficient sum was
left for Natalie's mother, and put into discreet hands. The money for
the man Kirski would have to be properly tied up, lest it should prove a
temptation. Why, those two pieces of Italian embroidery lying there, he
had bought them months ago, intending to present them to Natalie, but
from time to time the opportunity had been missed. And so forth, and so
forth.

But despite all this fortitude, and these commonplace and practical
considerations, his eyes would wander to that little handful of flowers
lying on the table, and his thoughts would wander farther still. As he
pictured to himself his going to the young Hungarian girl, and taking
her hand, and telling her that now it was no longer a parting for a
couple of years, but a parting forever, his heart grew cold and sick. He
thought of her terrified eyes, of her self-reproaches, of her
entreaties, perhaps.

"I wish Evelyn would tell her," he murmured aloud, and he went to the
window. "Surely it would be better if I were never to see her again."

It was a long and agonizing night, despite all his resolutions. The gray
morning, appearing palely over the river and the bridges, found him
still pacing up and down there, with nothing settled at all, no letter
written, no memoranda made. All that the night had done was to increase
a hundred-fold his dread of meeting Natalie. And now the daylight only
told him that that interview was coming nearer. It had become a question
of hours.

At last, worn out with fatigue and despair, he threw himself on a couch
hard by