cried fiercely, "did you not let them kill
you?"

Suddenly her hands flew up to her hot face. "Then," she moaned, "then
you would not have lived to see!"

The Emperor stepped between them. Tall, severe, he was cold in anger.

"It's the intrusion of a rowdy, mademoiselle." To Driscoll he said,
"Now, go!"

Utterly confused, the trooper turned to obey. But at the first step he
swung round, looking as he had never looked in the bloodiest of cavalry
charges.

"I am here for your answer, sir," he said.

"Answer? What answer, fellow?"

Driscoll breathed once, he breathed twice, and yet again. It may be he
counted them. Then he spoke.

"You understand, of course, that I might call you a puppy? Or break you
over my knee? But I've got something harder on hand. It's to make you
honor your promise. I've ridden forty miles for what you were to give me
six hours ago at Chapultepec. Now then, shall I bring the men to save
your empire? Think well. You need not take the question from me. Take it
from them, from an army of fifty thousand men. Now, answer! And
remember, you can save your empire."

"Save my empire?" Maximilian repeated the words.

There was a reluctant note in the query. Jacqueline heard. And the
bravest act of her life was when she raised her head and faced her
shame, with _him_ to see. She must begin her fight all over again.

"Yes, your play empire, sire," she said, wielding two weapons, the
mockery in her voice, the seduction of her eyes.

Driscoll saw his cause forlorn against eyes like those.

"It's unfair!" he protested involuntarily.

She turned on him in defiance. "It is _not_ unfair! And you,
monsieur, of all men, know that it is not. You, and you alone, know what
I, what I would give--what I tried to give--that I might win in this!"

He could not help a thrill of admiration. She was battling against all
men and women to change the destinies of two continents.

"W'y, I take it back then," he said.

She stared at him in wonder, and drew farther away. It was his tone,
altered as she could never have thought possible, nor had she known that
aught on earth might hurt her so. She heard a decent man addressing some
unavoidable word to a strumpet. All vestige of respect was gone, gone
unconsciously, except that respect for himself which would not allow
that the word be coarse or an insult. She looked in vain, too, for a
trace of anger. Once she had sought to kill him, but that had not
changed his b