a glass to his lips.

"There's no doubt about it; you are real!" said Hugo.

"I feel as if the chimney were still hot but that you had drenched the
fire in the grate."

"Who put this on you?" she asked as she unpinned the placard.

"I've a vague idea, from a vague overhearing of the colonel's remarks,
that it is public opinion," he replied, and seeing, that she was about
to tear it up, he arrested her action. "No, I think I'd like to save it
as a souvenir--the odds are so greatly against me--as a sort of souvenir
to keep up my courage."

His tone, the way he drew the muscles of his face, ironed out her frown
of disgust at public opinion with a smile. For he made his kind of
courage no less light-hearted and free of pose than Dellarme had made
his.

Directly the coachman, whom Marta had summoned when she went for the
water, appeared with an improvised litter, and the two bore in at the
kitchen door a guest for breakfast whose arrival gave Mrs. Galland a
distinctly visible surprise. His uniform was gray, and in her heart of
hearts she hated gray as the symbol of an enemy whom her husband had
fought. But when Marta told the story of the part he had played in
defence of the chandelier, personal partisanship abetted the motherly
impulse that was already breaking down prejudice. She was busy with a
dozen suggestions for his comfort, quite taking matters out of Marta's
hands.

"I know more about the care of the sick than you do!" she insisted. "One
lump or two in your coffee, sir? There, there, you had better let me
hold the cup for you. You are sure you can sit up? Then we must have a
pillow."

"I'll fetch one from the other room," put in Minna.

"Two will be better!" Marta called after her.

"It is delightful to have breakfast in your kitchen, madame," said Hugo
to Mrs. Galland in a way that ought to have justified her in thinking
herself the most charming and useful person in the world.

XXXI

UNTO CAESAR

It was more irritating than ever for Mrs. Galland to keep pace with her
daughter's inconsistencies. There was a Marta listening in partisan
sympathy to Hugo's story of why he had refused to fight and telling the
story of her school in return. There was a Marta seizing Hugo's hand in
a quick, impulsive grasp as she exclaimed: "Your act personified what I
taught my children!" There was a Marta planning how he should be
secreted in the coachman's quarters over the stable, where he would be
reasonab