"But not you?"
"I shall offer my services. My leave of absence will, in any case, end on the first of September; and even if it did not, my health is quite enough restored to enable me to walk up to a cannon's mouth."
"Ah, mon Saint Père, what words are these?"
"The words of an old soldier, Queen Whims, who has been so long at his trade that he has got to take a strange pleasure in it."
"In killing?"
"No; only in the chance of——. But I will not cast an unnecessary shadow over your bright soul. There will be shadows enough over it soon, without my help."
"What do you mean?"
"That you, and thousands more as delicate, if not as fair as you, will see, ere long, what the realities of human life are; and in a way of which you have never dreamed."
And he murmured, half to himself, the words of the prophet,—"'Thou saidst, I shall sit as a lady for ever: but these two things shall come upon thee in one day, widowhood and the loss of children. They shall even come upon thee,'—No! not in their fulness! There are noble elements beneath the crust, which will come out all the purer from the fire; and we shall have heroes and heroines rising up among us as of old, sincere and earnest, ready to face their work, and to do it, and to call all things by their right names once more; and Queen Whims herself will become what Queen Whims might be!"
Valencia was awed, as well she might have been; for there was a very deep sadness about Campbell's voice.