"I never knew--I never thought! Oh, Tony!" she exclaimed, twisting her hands together as she sat before him.
"I became a sergeant," he said. "Then I brought back the remnants of the geographical expedition to Ouargla." He taxed his memory for the vivid details of that terrible retreat. He compelled her to realise something of the dumb, implacable hostility of the Sahara, to see, in the evening against the setting sun, the mounted figures of the Touaregs, and to understand that the day's march had not shaken them off. She seemed to be on the march herself, wondering whether she would live out the day, or, if she survived that, whether she would live out the night.
"But you succeeded!" she cried, clinging to the fact that they were both here in France, with the murmur of the Mediterranean in their ears. "You came back."
"Yes, I came back. One morning I marched my men through the gate of Ouargla--and what were you doing upon that day?"
Talking, perhaps, with Lionel Callon, in one of those unfrequented public places with which London abounds! Millie could not tell. She sat there and compared Lionel Callon with the man who was before her. Memories of the kind of talk she was wont to hold with Lionel Callon recurred to her, filling her with shame. She was glad to think that when Tony led his broken, weary force through the gate of Ouargla Lionel Callon had not been with her--had indeed been far away in Chili. She suddenly placed her hands before her face and burst into tears.
"Oh, Tony," she whispered, in an abasement of humiliation. "Oh, Tony."
"By that homeward march," he went on, "I gained my commission. That was what I aimed at all the while, and I had earned it at the last. Look!"
He took from his pocket the letter which his colonel had handed to him at Ain-Sefra. He had carefully treasured it all this while. He held it out to her and made her read.
"You see?" he said. "A commission won from the ranks in the hardest service known to soldiers, won without advantage of name, or friends, or money. Won just by myself. That is what I strove for. If I could win that I could come back to you with a great pride. I should be no longer the man who was no good. You yourself might even be proud of me. I used to dream of that--to dream of something else."
His voice softened a little, and a smile for a moment relaxed the severity of his face.