"You all loved him?" she said softly.
"Loved him!" he gave a short laugh. "Well, he was a sort of god to me, and to the men too. Some of the subs thought him hard on them—so he was, hard as nails."
Astonishment filled her gaze.
"Gad," said the man, "I remember poor little Fane—he went during the siege, fever—I remember the little fellow saying, half crying: 'I think English is made of stone.' But it was before he had seen him at the fighting. That was a leader of men!"
"Hard!" said Lady Gerardine. "Harry made of stone!" she gave a low laugh, half indignant.
"Don't you know," said Bethune, "that here"—he tapped the jagged lines of the mountain maps—"you can't do anything if you're not harder than the rocks? And with those devils of ours," his own face softened oddly as he spoke; "they're hard enough—they're devils, I tell you—to lead them right, you've got to be more than devil yourself—you've got to be—an archangel."
Some vision of a glorious fighting Michael, with a stern serene face of immutable justice, featured with the beauty of the dead, rose before Rosamond. She flushed and trembled; then she thought back again and with anger.
"Ah, but his heart," she said; "ah, you did not know him!"
He wheeled round upon her and gazed at her, his cold eyes singularly enkindled.
"You forget," said he, and quoted "that every man 'boasts two soul sides, one to face the world with, one to show a woman when he loves her.'"