running along the corridor--ready to obey. At the foot of the stairs St.
Genis intercepted her.

"Let me pass!" she cried wildly.

"Not before you have said that you have forgiven me!" he entreated as he
clung to her white draperies with a passionate gesture of appeal.

An exclamation which was almost one of loathing escaped her lips and
with a jerk she freed her skirt from his clutch. Then she ran quickly up
the stairs. Outside the door of her own room on the first landing she
paused for one minute, and from out of the gloom her voice came to him
like the knell of passing hope.

"If he comes back alive out of the hell to which you condemned him," she
said, "I may in the future endure the sight of you again. . . . If he
dies . . . may God forgive you!"

The opening and shutting of a door told him that she was gone, and he
was left in company with his shame.

CHAPTER XII

THE WINNING HAND

Until far into the night the air reverberated with incessant
cannonade--from the direction of Genappe and from that of Wavre--but
just before dawn all was still. The stream of convoys which bore the
wounded along the road to Brussels from Mont Saint Jean and Hougoumont
and La Haye Sainte had momentarily ceased its endless course. The sky
had that perfect serenity of a midsummer's night, starlit and azure with
the honey-coloured moon sinking slowly down towards the west. Here at
the edge of the wood the air had a sweet smell of wet earth and damp
moss and freshly cut hay: it had all the delicious softness of a loved
one's embrace.

Through the roar of distant cannonade, Bobby had slept. For a time after
St. Genis left him he had watched the long straight road with dull,
unseeing eyes--he had seen the first convoy, overfilled with wounded men
lying huddled on heaped-up straw, and had thanked God that he was lying
on this exquisitely soft carpet made of thousands of tiny green
plants--moss, grass, weeds, young tendrils and growing buds and opening
leaves that were delicious to the touch. He had quite forgotten that he
was wounded--neither his head nor his leg nor his arm seemed to hurt him
now: and he was able to think in peace of Crystal and of her happiness.

St. Genis would have come to her by then: she would be happy to see him
safe and well, and perhaps--in the midst of her joy--she would think of
the friend who so gladly offered up his life for her.

When the air around was no longer shaken by constant repercuss