"All the same I'm going to tell you," Sanda insisted, panting a little over her heartbeats. "My news is not about a 'sale,' it's about a gift. Yet I think it's the very same news Nurse Yorke almost read you. Oh, I should have been thwarted, cheated, if she had! This is for me to tell you, my Soldier, me, and no one else, for the gift is to me, for you. The President of the French Republic has given it to me for Max St. George of the Tenth Company, First Regiment of the Legion; Max St. George, owner of the Château de la Tour, home of his far-off ancestors—where he and his Sanda will go some day together when he's tired of soldiering—and Sanda's father, Max's grateful colonel, will visit them. And that wonderful old Four Eyes, who has almost worked the Legion into a mutiny for the Soldier's sake, will live with them, if he can ever bear to leave the Legion. Now, can't you guess what the President's gift is?"
"Not—not pardon?" Max's lips formed the words which he could not speak aloud. But it was as if Sanda heard.
"Pardon, and a lieutenant's commission in the Legion."
"Sanda!"
All the worship of a man's heart and soul were in that name as it broke from him with a sob.
"My Soldier!" she answered, in his arms. And then they spoke no more; for again they were living through in that minute all the long months of agony and bliss in the desert, when their dream had been coming true.
Four months later Max left his bride to go with a French, English, and Russian contingent of the Legion to fight with the Allies in France, in the War of the World.
Sanda waits, and prays—and hopes.
THE END