through the bitterness of her
solitude. For now she knew at last that she was alone on earth.
The knowledge had come in a moment, it had come with the first
trample of the Prussian horsemen; she knew that her love, given
so wholly, so passionately, was nothing, had been nothing, to her
father. He whom she lived for--was it possible that he could
abandon her in such an hour? She had waited all day, all night;
she said in her heart that he would come from his machines and
his turret to be with her. Together they could have lived through
the shame of the day--of the bitter days to come; together they
could have suffered, knowing that they had each other to live
for.

But she could not face the Prussian scourge alone--she could not.
These two truths had been revealed to her with the first tap of
the Prussian drums: that every inch of soil, every grass-blade,
every pebble of her land was dearer to her than life; and that
her life was nothing to her father. He who alone in all the world
could have stood between her and the shameful pageant of
invasion, who could have taught her to face it, to front it
nobly, who could have bidden her hope and pray and wait--he sat
in his turret turning little wheels while the whole land shook
with the throes of invasion--their native land, Lorraine.

The death-throes of a nation are felt by all the world. Bismarck
placed a steel-clad hand upon the pulse of France, and knew
Lorraine lay dying. Amputation would end all--Moltke had the
apparatus ready; Bismarck, the great surgeon and greater
executioner, sat with mailed hand on the pulse of France and
waited.

The girl, Lorraine, too, knew the crisis had come--sensitive
prophetess in all that she held sacred! She had never prayed for
the Emperor, but she always prayed for France when she asked
forgiveness night and morning. At confession she had accused
herself sometimes because she could not understand the deeper
meaning of this daily prayer, but now she understood it; the
fierce love for native soil that blazes up when that soil is
stamped upon and spurned.

All the devotion, all the tender adoration, that she had given her
father turned now to bitter grief for this dear land of hers. It, at
least, had been her mother, her comforter, her consolation; and
there it lay before her--it called to her; she responded passionately,
and gave it all her love. So she lay there in the dark, her hot face
buried in her hands, close to one whom she n