she said, with a smile
sweet as the morning--a smile that few saw light on them. "It came too
naturally to a man of honor for you to care for the epithet. Yet it was
a great one, a most generous one. But I have not heard one thing: what
argument did you use to obtain her release?"

"No one has ever heard it," he answered her, while his voice sank low.
"I will trust you with it; it will not pass elsewhere. I told him enough
of--of my own past life to show him that I knew what his had been, and
that I knew, moreover, though they were dead to me now, men in that
greater world of Europe who would believe my statement if I wrote them
this outrage on the Emir, and would avenge it for the reputation of the
Empire. And unless he released the Emir's wife, I swore to him that
I would so write, though he had me shot on the morrow; and he knew I
should keep my word."

She was silent some moments, looking on him with a musing gaze, in which
some pity and more honor for him were blended.

"You told him your past. Will you confess it to me?"

"I cannot, madame."

"And why?"

"Because I am dead! Because, in your presence, it becomes more bitter to
me to remember that I ever lived."

"You speak strangely. Cannot your life have a resurrection?"

"Never, madame. For a brief hour you have given it one--in dreams. It
will have no other."

"But surely there may be ways--such a story as you have told me brought
to the Emperor's knowledge, you would see your enemy disgraced, yourself
honored?"

"Possibly, madame. But it is out of the question that it should ever be
so brought. As I am now, so I desire to live and die."

"You voluntarily condemn yourself to this?"

"I have voluntarily chosen it. I am well sure that the silence I entreat
will be kept by you?"

"Assuredly; unless by your wish it be broken. Yet--I await my brother's
arrival here; he is a soldier himself; I shall hope that he will
persuade you to think differently of your future. At any rate, both his
and my own influence will always be exerted for you, if you will avail
yourself of it."

"You do me much honor, madame. All I will ever ask of you is to return
those coins to my Colonel, and to forget that your gentleness has made
me forget, for one merciful half hour, the sufferance on which alone a
trooper can present himself here."

He swept the ground with his kepi as though it were the plumed hat of a
Marshal, and backed slowly from her presence, as he had ma