et once, not as soldier
to chief, but as man to man, the tyrant who held his fate.

For once, beneath the spur of that foul outrage to the dignity and the
innocence of the woman he had quitted, he had allowed a passionate
truth to force its way through the barriers of rank and the bonds of
subservience. Insult to himself he had borne as the base prerogative
of his superior, but insult to her he had avenged with the vengeance of
equal to equal, of the man who loved on the man who calumniated her.

And as he sat in the darkness of the night with the heavy tramp of his
guards forever on his ear, there was peace rather than rebellion in his
heart--the peace of one heartsick with strife and with temptation, who
beholds in death a merciful ending to the ordeal of existence. "I shall
die in her cause at least," he thought. "I could be content if I were
only sure that she would never know."

For this was the chief dread which hung on him, that she should ever
know, and in knowing, suffer for his sake.

The night rolled on, the army around him knew nothing of what had
happened. Chateauroy, conscious of his own coarse guilt against the
guest of his Marshal, kept the matter untold and undiscovered, under
the plea that he desired not to destroy the harmony of the general
rejoicing. The one or two field-officers with whom he took counsel
agreed to the wisdom of letting the night pass away undisturbed. The
accused was the idol of his own squadron; there was no gauge what might
not be done by troops heated with excitement and drunk with wine,
if they knew that their favorite comrade had set the example of
insubordination, and would be sentenced to suffer for it. Beyond
these, and the men employed in his arrest and guard, none knew what had
chanced; not the soldiery beneath that vast sea of canvas, many of whom
would have rushed headlong to mutiny and to destruction at his word; not
the woman who in the solitude of her wakeful hours was haunted by the
memory of his love-words, and felt steal on her the unacknowledged sense
that, if his future were left to misery, happiness could never more
touch her own; not the friend of his early days, laughing and drinking
with the officers of the staff.

None knew; not even Cigarette. She sat alone, so far away that none
sought her out, beside the picket-fire that had long died out, with the
little white dog of Zaraila curled on the scarlet folds of her skirt.
Her arms rested on her knees, and