He rose and quietly placed his chair against the wall. "Pippa," he said, "there are only two things that could prevent it. One, if there is a storm and—the other——" he shook his head impatiently.
The girl took down a work-basket, and after searching its contents extracted a tiny trinket.
"You mean," she said, stepping lightly over to him, "that you might go to join your brothers—those who smiled so bravely?"
"We never know, Pippa," he answered.
She reached for the lapel of his coat and pinned the little keepsake on it. "'Tis a black cat," she said. "I saw it in the village store, so small and funny, like Louis. It is a gift from little Pippa, who will pray to the Virgin every night that her Prince may not be killed—unless——"
He looked at the little mascot, which dangled above a couple of ribbons.
"Unless?" he said.
For a moment there was a flash in her eyes and a sudden crimson flush in her cheeks that startled him. For the first time in her life she felt the instinct of a tigress; that strange fusion of passion and timidity that comes to women of her kind when it seems they may lose the object of their love.
"Unless he—forgets." The words were spoken between lips that hardly moved.
"By the sacred bones of my ancestors," he said, with a sort of sincere grandiloquence, "I promise to come. So that I shall always think of you, my Pippa, I will paint a black cat upon the machine, and woe to the Hun who dares to singe its whiskers!"