place. It is no fault of hers nor yours
that I am not here a prisoner."

She passed her thin hand dazedly across her forehead.

"I see," she muttered. Then again bursting out passionately, she
said--"Fool! you never would have been touched! Do you think that Lee
would have gone for you, with higher game in your division commander?
No! Those supports were a feint to draw him to your assistance while our
main column broke his centre. Yes, you may stare at me, Clarence Brant.
You are a good lawyer--they say a dashing fighter, too. I never thought
you a coward, even in your irresolution; but you are fighting with men
drilled in the art of war and strategy when you were a boy outcast on
the plains." She stopped, closed her eyes, and then added, wearily--"But
that was yesterday--to-day, who knows? All may be changed. The supports
may still attack you. That was why I stopped to write you that note an
hour ago, when I believed I should be leaving here for ever. Yes, I did
it!" she went on, with half-wearied, half-dogged determination. "You may
as well know all. I had arranged to fly. Your pickets were to be drawn
by friends of mine, who were waiting for me beyond your lines. Well, I
lingered here when I saw you arrive--lingered to write you that note.
And--I was too late!"

But Brant had been watching her varying expression, her kindling
eye, her strange masculine grasp of military knowledge, her soldierly
phraseology, all so new to her, that he scarcely heeded the feminine
ending of her speech. It seemed to him no longer the Diana of his
youthful fancy, but some Pallas Athene, who now looked up at him from
the pillow. He had never before fully believed in her unselfish devotion
to the cause until now, when it seemed to have almost unsexed her. In
his wildest comprehension of her he had never dreamed her a Joan of Arc,
and yet hers was the face which might have confronted him, exalted and
inspired, on the battlefield itself. He recalled himself with an effort.

"I thank you for your would-be warning," he said more gently, if not
so tenderly, "and God knows I wish your flight had been successful. But
even your warning is unnecessary, for the supports had already come up;
they had followed the second signal, and diverged to engage our division
on the left, leaving me alone. And their ruse of drawing our commander
to assist me would not have been successful, as I had suspected it, and
sent a message to him that I wanted no help