kness that followed fast on
that terrific spectacle of carnage, before which a whirlwind seemed to
have planted her. She heard the cries and yells, the groans and curses
of bleeding, dying men; saw banners in the dust, horsemen and horses
crushed under the great guns, mortality in fragments, heaps upon heaps
of ruin on the field Aceldama.

Where was he? Who would search among the slain for him? Who from among
the dying would rescue him? Who will stanch his bleeding wounds? Who
will moisten his parched lips? Whose voice sound in the ears that have
heard the roar of guns amid the crash of battle? What hand shall bathe
and fan that brow? What eyes shall watch till those eyelids unlock, and
catch the whisper of those lips? Nay, who will save his life from the
needless sacrifice? tell him that his plans are known, warn him back,
warn _him_ of spies and of treachery? Has Julius betrayed him?

She looked at the slave. But before she looked, her heart reproached her
for having doubted him.

"You will need this gold," she said. "Take it. Restore the miniature to
your master. And go,--go at once. If success be in store for _him_, I
share not the shame of it. If defeat, adversity, sickness,--your master
knows his wife fears but one thing, has fled but from one thing. Her
heart is with him, but she abhors the cause to which he has given
himself. She will not share his crime."

Difficult as these words were to speak, she spoke them without
faltering, and they admitted no discussion.

The slave lingered yet longer, but there was no more that she would say.
Assured at last of that, he said,--

"I obey you," and was gone.

He was gone,--gone! and she had betrayed nothing,--had given no
warning,--had uttered not a word by which the life that was of all lives
most precious to her might have been saved!

VII.

By eight o'clock next morning Mrs. Edgar was in the church. Von Gelhorn
preceded her by five minutes; he was walking up the aisle when she
entered, impatient for her appearing, eager to be gone,--wondering,
boy-like, that she came not.

He has performed a prodigious amount of labor since they last met. His
pictures were all removed to the Odeon, he said. His studio, haunt of
dreams, beloved of fame so long, stripped and barren, looked like any
other four-walled room,--and he, a freeman, stood equipped for service.

Yes, an hour would see him speeding to the capital. In less time than it
had taken him to perfect his a