erhaps there was to be another tragedy. I
found her later wishing to kill herself, to commit suicide, so that
she, too, need never return to her other life.... That was more
terrible than the other scenes. I could do nothing, yet my
responsibility had been great. In the end something was arranged. I
hardly remember what.

I was soon ready to go; on the same afternoon I had completed all my
preparations. I had so little to prepare. Then I rode out for the last
time with all my men behind me, and not a single other person. We
passed down the streets out from the Tartar City, through the ruins of
the great Ch'ien Men Gate, and then followed straight along the vast
main street, still covered with _debris_ and dirt, and skulls and
broken weapons, as if the weeks and months which had gone by since the
fighting had been quite unheeded. Near the outer gates of the city I
met my three cavalrymen of the Indian regiment waiting to bid
good-bye. They joined me with some attempt at gaiety, but that soon
fizzled out. I had so plainly collapsed.

We passed into the country with the tall crops still rotting as they
stood, because everyone had fled and no one dared to return. We went
on faster and faster as the roads broadened, and as we galloped we met
new troops marching in on Peking. They were Germans driving captives
of many kinds in front of them. "Damned Germans," said the smaller
officer, who was the senior, and who had been quite silent for some
time. "Damned Germans," repeated the two others mechanically, as if
this was a new creed, and I, approving, faintly smiled. That stirred
them to talk again, and they told me that the expeditions had been
settled on, and that they would have to go, too. Orders had come from
home that they must not fall out with Waldersee. It was highly
important to placate the Germans because of South Africa. But the
Americans would not go, neither would the Russians, nor yet the
Japanese. It was to be a new arrangement. They went on talking in this
wise for a long time, and I heard these scraps of conversation vaguely
as in a dream. Cynically I thought that, although I was leaving it all
behind me in company of men who were strangers to Peking, the last
words would still be concerned with our tortuous diplomacy. Yet my
gallant friends were only trying to console me--to make me forget.
Such things they understood far better than others. They were from
India, where men think a good deal, and sometimes ac