With a fluttering cry, she started forward, then stepped nervously back, and, stumbling against Max's foot, would have fallen if he had not caught her.
All his attention was for her, yet, with his eyes on the girl, he suddenly became conscious that something had happened among the officers. One man had stopped abruptly just in front of Sanda, while others were going through the gate, hurrying on as if tactfully desirous to get themselves out of the way. A voice murmured "Mon Dieu!" and having steadied Sanda, Max saw standing close to them a small, rather dapper man with a lined brown face, a very square, smooth-shaven jaw, long gray eyes, short gray hair, and the neat slimness of a West Point cadet. He had on his sleeve the five gold stripes signifying a colonel's rank, and was decorated with several medals.
Instantly Max understood the situation. The one thing that ought not to have happened, had happened.
CHAPTER IX
THE COLONEL OF THE LEGION
All Sanda's anxiously laid plans were swept away in the wind of emotion. She and the father she had meant to win with loving diplomacy had stumbled upon each other crudely in a railway station. The dear resemblance upon which she had founded her best hope had struck Colonel DeLisle like a blow over the heart.
The dapper little officer, with the figure of a boy and the face of a tragic mask, stared straight at the girl, with the look of one who meets a ghost in daylight. "My God! who are you?" he faltered, in French. The words seemed to speak themselves against his will.
Sanda was deathly pale. But she caught at her courage as a soldier grasps his flag: "I am—Corisande, your daughter," she answered in that small, sweet voice of a child with which she had begged Max to pardon her, yesterday. And she too spoke in French. "My father, forgive me if I've done wrong to come to you like this. But I was so unhappy. I wanted so much to see you. And I've travelled such a long way!"
For an instant the man still stared at her in silence. He had the air of listening for a voice within a voice, as one listens through the sound of running water for its tune. Max, who must now unfortunately be explained and accounted for in spite of every difficulty, found a strange likeness between the middle-aged soldier and the young girl. It was in the eyes: long, gray, haunted with thoughts and dreams. If Sanda DeLisle ever had to become acquainted with sorrow her eyes would be like her father's.