"How they live only for the slaughter! How they perish like the beasts
of the field!" she thought. Upon her, as on the poet or the patriot
who could translate and could utter the thought as she could not, there
weighed the burden of that heart-sick consciousness of the vanity of the
highest hope, the futility of the noblest effort, to bring light into
the darkness of the suffering, toiling, blind throngs of human life.
"There is only one thing worth doing--to die greatly!" thought the
aching heart of the child-soldier, unconsciously returning to the only
end that the genius and the greatness of Greece could find as issue to
the terrible jest, the mysterious despair, of all existence.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE DESERT HAWK AND THE PARADISE-BIRD.
Some way distant, parted by a broad strip of unoccupied ground from
the camp, were the grand marquees set aside for the Marshal and for
his guests. They were twelve in number, gayly decorated--as far as
decoration could be obtained in the southern provinces of Algeria--and
had, Arab-like, in front of each the standard of the Tricolor. Before
one were two other standards also: the flags of England and of Spain.
Cigarette, looking on from afar, saw the alien colors wave in the
torchlight flickering on them. "That is hers," thought the Little One,
with the mournful and noble emotions of the previous moments swiftly
changing into the violent, reasonless, tumultuous hatred at once of a
rival and of an Order.
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