blow over the heart.

The dapper little officer, with the figure of a boy and the face of a
tragic mask, stared straight at the girl, with the look of one who meets
a ghost in daylight. "My God! who are you?" he faltered, in French. The
words seemed to speak themselves against his will.

Sanda was deathly pale. But she caught at her courage as a soldier
grasps his flag: "I am--Corisande, your daughter," she answered in that
small, sweet voice of a child with which she had begged Max to pardon
her, yesterday. And she too spoke in French. "My father, forgive me if
I've done wrong to come to you like this. But I was so unhappy. I wanted
so much to see you. And I've travelled such a long way!"

For an instant the man still stared at her in silence. He had the air of
listening for a voice within a voice, as one listens through the sound
of running water for its tune. Max, who must now unfortunately be
explained and accounted for in spite of every difficulty, found a
strange likeness between the middle-aged soldier and the young girl. It
was in the eyes: long, gray, haunted with thoughts and dreams. If Sanda
DeLisle ever had to become acquainted with sorrow her eyes would be like
her father's.

The pause was but for a second or two, though it was full of suspense
for the girl, and even for Max, who forgot himself in anxiety for her.
The hardness of straining after self-control melted to sudden beauty, as
Max had seen Sanda's face transfigured. Never again, it seemed to
him--no matter what Colonel DeLisle's actions might be--could he believe
him to be cruel or cold.

"Ma petite," DeLisle said, with a quiver in his voice that echoed up
from heartstrings swept by some spirit hand. "Can it be true? You have
come--across half the world, to me?"

"Oh, father, yes, it is true. And always I've wanted to come." Sanda's
voice caressed him. No man could have resisted her then. "You're not
angry?"

"Mon Dieu, no, I'm not angry, though my life is not the life for a girl.
I only--for a moment I thought I saw----"

"I know, I guessed," Sanda gently filled up his pause. "Since I began
growing into a woman every one told me I was like--her. But I wouldn't
send you a photograph. For years I've planned to surprise you--and make
you _care_ a little, if I could."

"Care!" he echoed, a look as of anguish passing over his face like the
shadow of a cloud; then leaving it clear, though sad with the habitual
sadness which had scored its ma