with a look of genuine sympathy, as if he felt instinctively what such words must cost me. "From this hour I will never again question a single order you give or decision you take." He held out his hand, and grasped mine in a warm pledge of earnest friendship. "We will go on, as you say, and frustrate this she-devil yet—or fall in the effort."
A long silence followed, in which we were both busy with our own thoughts; and when the silence was broken we went on with a long, detailed discussion of the means to be adopted to quicken our preparations and expedite the arrangements that should make us indifferent to any action by General Kolfort.
The work interested us both absorbingly, and while Zoiloff remained with me, and my thoughts were occupied in planning the work to be done, I was even inclined to accept my own arguments that all was not yet lost.
But when he had left me a relapse came, and I seemed to be overwhelmed with a sense of the weariness and futility of it all. I had nothing now to gain. A few hours had changed everything for me, and all my enthusiasm had evaporated, like the sparkle from flat wine.
Bulgaria might profit, but what was Bulgaria to me? I had not been fighting for Bulgaria, but for Christina; and what prospect was there now for her but the gloomiest? I had gained the priceless treasure of her love; but with the very ecstasy of the knowledge had come the bane that I could never even win happiness for her.
I laid bare my heart to myself in this bitter self-communing. I had tried to persuade myself before that mine was that rare thing—the rarest on earth, indeed—selfless love; but I knew now that that had
