took
it in both of his.

Inside the ballroom the orchestra was still playing the
farandole.

V

COWARDS AND THEIR COURAGE

Rickerl took the old vicomte's withered hand; he could not speak;
his sister Alixe was crying.

"War? War? Allons donc!" muttered the old man. "Helen! Ricky says
we are to have war. Helen, do you hear? War!"

Then Rickerl hurried away to dress, for he was to ride to the
Rhine, nor spare whip nor spur; and Barbara Lisle comforted
little Alixe, who wept as she watched the maids throwing
everything pell-mell into their trunks; for they, too, were to
leave at daylight on the Moselle Express for Cologne.

Below, a boy appeared, leading Rickerl's horse from the stables;
there were lanterns moving along the drive, and dark figures
passing, clustering about the two steaming horses of the
messengers, where a groom stood with a pail of water and a
sponge. Everywhere the hum of voices rose and died away like the
rumour of swarming bees. "War!" "War is declared!" "When?" "War
was declared to-day!" "When?" "War was declared to-day at noon!"
And always the burden of the busy voices was the same, menacing,
incredulous, half-whispered, but always the same--"War! war!
war!"

Booted and spurred, square-shouldered and muscular in his corded
riding-suit, Rickerl passed the terrace again after the last
adieux. The last? No, for as his heavy horse stamped out across
the drive a voice murmured his name, a hand fell on his arm.

"Dorothy," he whispered, bending from his saddle.

"I love you, Ricky," she gasped.

And they say women are cowards!

He lifted her to his breast, held her crushed and panting; she
put both hands before her eyes.

"There has never been any one but you; do you believe it?" he
stammered.

"Yes."

"Then you are mine!"

"Yes. May God spare you!"

And Rickerl, loyal in little things, swung her gently to the
ground again, unkissed.

There was a flurry of gravel, a glimpse of a horse rearing,
plunging, springing into the darkness--that was all. And she
crept back to the terrace with hot, tearless lids, that burned
till all her body quivered with the fever in her aching eyes. She
passed the orchestra, trudging back to Saint-Lys along the gravel
drive, the two fat violinists stolidly smoking their Alsacian
pipes, the harp-player muttering to the aged piper, the little
biniou man from the Cote-d'Or, excited, mercurial, gesticulating
at every step. War! war! war! The bur