The last dance together! He sent his heart to her, all his heart—and the music helped him, and the rhythm; the very atmosphere of the room—rose-scented—helped him to make her understand. He could have kissed her hair, so close were the heaped-up fair curls to his mouth; he could have whispered to her, and nobody would hear: he could have told her something at any rate, of that love which had filled his heart since all time, not months or years since he had known her, but since all time filling every minute of his life. He could have taught her what love meant, thrilled her heart with thoughts of might-have-been; he could have roused sweet pity in her soul, love's gentle mother that has the power to give birth to Love.

But he did not kiss her, nor did he speak: because though he was quite sure that she would understand, he was equally sure that she could not respond. She was not his—not his in the world of realities, at any rate. Her heart belonged to the friend of her childhood, the only man whom she would ever love—the man by whom he—poor Bobby!—had been content to be defamed and vilified in order that she should remain happy in her ideals and in her choice. So he was content only to hold her, his arm round her waist, one hand holding hers imprisoned—she herself becoming more and more the creature of his dreams, the angel that haunted him in wakefulness and in sleep: immortally his bride, yet never to be wholly his again as she was now in this heavenly moment where they stood together within the pale of eternity.

In this, their last dance together!

VII

Far into the night, into the small hours of the morning, Crystal de Cambray sat by the open window of her tiny bedroom in the small apartment which her father had taken for himself and his family in the rue du Marais.

She sat, with one elbow resting on the window-sill, her right hand fingering, with nervy, febrile movements, a letter which she held. Jeanne had handed it to her when she came home from the ball: M. de St. Genis, Jeanne explained, had given it to her earlier in the evening . . . soon after ten o'clock it must have been . . . M. le Marquis seemed in a great hurry, but he made Jeanne swear most solemnly that Mademoiselle Crystal should have the letter as soon as she came home . . . also M. le Marquis had insisted that the letter should be given to Mademoiselle when she was alone.

Not a little puzzled—for had she not taken fond leave of Maurice shortly before ten o'clock, when he had told her that his orders were to quit the ball then and report himself at once at headquarters. He had seemed very despondent, Crystal thought, and the words which he spoke when finally he kissed her, had in them all the sadness of a last farewell. Crystal even had felt a tinge of remorse—when she saw how sad he was—that she had not responded more warmly to his kiss. It almost seemed as if her heart rebelled against it, and when he pressed her with his accustomed passionate ardour to his breast, she had felt a curious shrinking within herself, a desire to push him away, even though her whole heart went out to him with pity and with sorrow.

And now here was this letter. Crystal was a long time before she made up her mind to open it: the paper—damp with the rain—seemed to hold a certain fatefulness within its folds. At last she read the letter, and long after she had read it she sat at the open window, listening to the dreary, monotonous patter of the rain, and to the distant sounds of moving horses and men, the rattle of wheels, the bugle calls, the departure of the allied troops to meet the armies of the great adventurer on the billowing plains of Belgium.

This is what Maurice had written to her a few moments before he left; and it must have taken him some time to pen the lengthy epistle.

"My beautiful Crystal,