Page:Under two flags ouida.djvu/616

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608
UNDER TWO FLAGS


tenderness far more eloquent from her than from women less proud and less prone to weakness.

  • Ah, hush ! when I think of what her love was, how

worthless looks my own ! how little worthy of the fate it finds ! What have I done that every joy should become mine, when she — »-' Her mouth trembled, and the phrase died unfinished ; strong as her own love had grown, it looked to her unproven and without desert, beside that which had chosen to perish for his sake. And where they stood with the future as fair before them as the light of the day around them, he bowed his head as before some sacred thing at the whisper of the child who had died for him. I The memories of both went back to a place in a desert land where the folds of the tricolor drooped over one little grave turned westward towards the shores of France — a grave, made where the beat of drum, and the sound of moving squadrons, and the ring of the trumpet call, and the noise of the assembling battahons could be heard by night and day; a grave, where the troops as they passed it by, saluted and lowered their arms in tender reverence, in faithful unasked homage, because, beneath the Flag they honoured, there was carved in the white stone one name that spoke to every heart within the army she had loved, one name on which the Arab sun streamed as with a martyr's glory:

’CIGARETTE,

'enfant db l'abm]6e, soldat de la feanch.*