fe. With it he had bettered no one. Yet by his death he hoped
to save more than life to another. This other was the girl before him.
He had wrecked her dearest ambition. For France's sake she would have
lured him from peril. For that, and that alone, she had sacrificed her
name. Such accounted for their interview at Cuernavaca. Such accounted
for her coming to Queretaro. Yet through his own blind weakness she had
failed. France had lost Mexico, he his life, and she--her happiness. But
the last could yet be restored. And why not purchase it with his death,
since he must have died in any case?

"Must have," Driscoll interrupted, "must have died in any case?"

The American had listened perplexed, now with a quick, eager start, now
with crinkled brows. First of all the old mystery and its anguish had
assailed him. The hideous, gloomy tangle would wound him round again.
Did Jacqueline care for this prince? Surely, because he had seen the
evidence. But why had she intrigued against his Empire, why had she
turned Confederate aid from him?

Then, as the ruined monarch spoke, the other man saw. He saw the truth.
Truth that reconciled all contradictions. That explained what even the
theory of her wanton heart had only half satisfied before. Explained
everything by that heart of purest gold. The lover knew now why she had
delivered him to Lopez and the Tiger, two years ago, though with the act
so perversely confessing her love for him. He knew why, at Boone's
Cordova plantation, she had tempted him to hold her for his own, though
even then she was returning to the capital, to Maximilian. No, it was
not wanton sport. It was not contradiction. But it was conflict. In the
contemplation of that conflict he stood unnerved. It was the conflict
between a wild yet altogether French scheme of patriotic endeavor and
her own good woman's love. His eyes wandered to her, half afraid, and
the chill of months about his heart was gone, as some great berg of ice
sinks in the warmth of sunny waters. From siren alluring flesh whose
touch was woe, she was become a sceptred angel, far, far away, so
tantalizingly far away!

Thus Driscoll listened on, happy in his soul of a man, yet abashed as a
boy. But listening, at the last he was perplexed anew, though for
another reason.

"Must have died, sir?" he repeated again. "But that wasn't what you
thought last night. No sir, last night you thought you could escape. But
just the same you turned back. Yo