Blanche, and the rat, and all the dogs, will you?
They will show you the Chateau de Cigarette in Algiers. I should not
like to think that they would starve."

She felt his lips move with the promise he could not find voice to
utter; and she thanked him with that old child-like smile that had lost
nothing of its light.

"That is good; they will be happy with you. And see here--that Arab must
have back his white horse; he alone saved you. Have heed that they spare
him. And make my grave somewhere where my army passes; where I can hear
the trumpets, and the arms, and the passage of the troops--O God! I
forgot! I shall not wake when the bugles sound. It will all end now;
will it not? That is horrible, horrible!"

A shudder shook her as, for the moment, the full sense that all her
glowing, redundant, sunlit, passionate life was crushed out forever from
its place upon the earth forced itself on and overwhelmed her. But she
was of too brave a mold to suffer any foe--even the foe that conquers
kings--to have power to appall her. She raised herself, and looked at
the soldiery around her, among them the men whose carbines had killed
her, whose anguish was like the heart-rending anguish of women.

"Mes Francais! That was a foolish word of mine. How many of my bravest
have fallen in death; and shall I be afraid of what they welcomed? Do
not grieve like that. You could not help it; you were doing your duty.
If the shots had not come to me, they would have gone to him; and he has
been unhappy so long, and borne wrong so patiently, he has earned the
right to live and enjoy. Now I--I have been happy all my days, like a
bird, like a kitten, like a foal, just from being young and taking no
thought. I should have had to suffer if I had lived. It is much best as
it is----"

Her voice failed her when she had spoken the heroic words; loss of blood
was fast draining all strength from her, and she quivered in a torture
she could not wholly conceal. He for whom she perished hung over her in
an agony greater far than hers. It seemed a hideous dream to him that
this child lay dying in his stead.

"Can nothing save her?" he cried aloud. "O God! that you had fired one
moment sooner!"

She heard; and looked up at him with a look in which all the passionate,
hopeless, imperishable love she had resisted and concealed so long spoke
with an intensity she never dreamed.

"She is content," she whispered softly. "You did not understand her
right