s throat, grew still and fear-stricken with a
great awe when the muttering passed through the camp that they would see
no more among their ranks that "woman's face" which they had beheld
so often foremost in the fight, with a look on it that thrilled their
hearts like their forbidden chant of the Marseillaise. For when the
third day closed, they knew that he must die.

There were men, hard as steel, ravenous of blood as vultures, who, when
they heard that sentence given, choked great, deep sobs down into the
cavernous depths of their broad, seared, sinewy breasts; but he never
gave sigh or sign. He never moved once while the decree of death was
read to him; and there was no change in the weary calmness of his eyes.
He bent his head in acquiescence.

"C'est bien!" he said simply.

It seemed well to him. Dead, his secret would lie in the grave with him,
and the long martyrdom of his life be ended.

In the brightness of the noon Cigarette leaned out of her little oval
casement that framed her head like an old black oak carving--a head with
the mellow bloom on its cheeks, and the flash of scarlet above its dark
curls, and the robin-like grace of poise and balance as it hung out
there in the sun.

Cigarette had been there a whole hour in thought; she who never had
wasted a moment in meditation or reverie, and who found the long African
day all too short for her busy, abundant, joyous life, that was always
full of haste and work, just as a bird's will seem so, though the bird
have no more to do than to fly at its will through summer air, and feed
at its will from brook and from berry, from a ripe ear of the corn or
from a deep cup of the lily. For the first time she was letting time
drift away in the fruitless labor of vain, purposeless thought, because,
for the first time also, happiness was not with her.

They were gone forever--all the elastic joyance, all the free, fair
hours, all the dauntless gayety of childhood, all the sweet, harmonious
laughter of a heart without a care. They were gone forever; for the
touch of love and of pain had been laid on her; and never again would
her radiant eyes smile cloudlessly, like the young eagle's, at a sun
that rose but to be greeted as only youth can great another dawn of life
that is without a shadow.

And she leaned wearily there, with her cheek lying on the cold, gray
Moorish stone; the color and the brightness were in the rays of the
light, in the rich hues of her hai