lotilde von Rudiger." It's her writing; that's her signature:
"Clotilde" in full. You'd hardly fancy that, now? But look!' the
colonel's eyelids were blinking, and Alvan dinted his finger-nail under
her name: 'there it is: Clotilde: signed shamelessly. Just as she might
have written to one of her friends about bonnets, and balls, and books!
Henceforward strangers, she and I?'

His laughter, even to Tresten, a man of camps, sounded profane as a
yell beneath a cathedral dome. 'Why, the woman has been in my hands--I
released her, spared her, drilled brain and blood, ransacked all the
code, to do her homage and honour in every mortal way; and we two
strangers! Do you hear that, Tresten? Why, if you had seen her!--she
was lost, and I, this man she now pierces with ice, kept hell down under
bolt and bar-worse, I believe, broke a good woman's heart! that never a
breath should rise that could accuse her on suspicion, or in malice, or
by accident, justly, or with a shadow of truth. "I think it best for us
both." So she thinks for me! She not only decides, she thinks; she is
the active principle; 'tis mine to submit.--A certain presumption was in
that girl always. Ha! do you hear me? Her letter may sting, it shall not
dupe. Strangers? Poor fool! You see plainly she was nailed down to write
the thing. This letter is a flat lie. She can lie--Oh! born to the art!
born to it!--lies like a Saint tricking Satan! But she says she has left
the city. Now to find her!'

He began marching about the room with great strides. 'I 'll have the
whole Continent up; her keepers shall have no rest; I 'll have them by
the Law Courts; and by stratagem, and, if law and cunning fail, force.
I have sworn it. I have done all that honour can ask of a man; more than
any man, to my knowledge, would have done, and now it's war. I
declare war on them. They will have it! I mean to take that girl from
them--snatch or catch! The girl is my girl, and if there are laws
against my having my own, to powder with the laws! Well, and do you
suppose me likely to be beaten? Then Cicero was a fiction, and Caesar
a people's legend. Not if they are history, and eloquence and
commandership have power over the blood and souls of men. First, I write
to her!'

His friend suggested that he knew not where she was. But already the pen
was at work, the brain pouring as from a pitcher.

Writing was blood-letting, and the interminable pages drained him of
his fever. As he wrote, s