"Give them to me, if you have picked them up," said the man, putting out
his hand for them.
Cecil closed his own upon them.
"Go and do as I bid you."
The equerry paused, doubtful whether or no to resist the tone and the
words. A Frenchman's respect for the military uniform prevailed. He went
within.
In the best chamber of the caravanserai Venetia Corona was sitting,
listless in the heat, when her attendant entered. The grandes dames who
were her companions in their tour through the seat of war were gone to
their siesta. She was alone, with a scarlet burnous thrown about her,
and upon her all the languor and idleness common to the noontide, which
was still very warm, though, in the autumn, the nights were so icily
cold on the exposed level of the plains. She was lost in thought,
moreover. She had heard, the day before, a story that had touched
her--of a soldier who had been slain crossing the plains, and had been
brought, through the hurricane and the sandstorm, at every risk, by his
comrade, who had chosen to endure all peril and wretchedness rather than
leave the dead body to the vultures and the kites. It was a nameless
story to her--the story of two obscure troopers, who, for aught she
knew, might have been two of the riotous and savage brigands that were
common in the Army of Africa. But the loyalty and the love shown in
it had moved her; and to the woman whose life had been cloudless and
cradled in ease from her birth, there was that in the suffering and the
sacrifice which the anecdote suggested, that had at once the fascination
of the unknown, and the pathos of a life so far removed from her, so
little dreamed of by her, that all its coarser cruelty was hidden, while
only its unutterable sadness and courage remained before her sight.
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