"I must be unworthy of companionship, for it is always taken from me," said Val, as if to herself, staring at her image in the glass. "I sometimes tremble because of Bran. Oh, Harry, if Bran--if Bran--!" Her eyes darkened with tears, her lips twisted in an anguish of terror and love and foreboding.
"Never think of such a thing," cried Harriott. "It is like inviting the daughter of Zeus to come after you. You will have Bran and much more than Bran, dear. Your life is far from over. There are those whom Sorrow elects her own for many years only to bless them in the end. All will come right with you yet, Val."
"Bless you, Harry! What would one do without friendship?"
"Well, you'll never have to do without me wherever you are, darling. Mine is one of the hands stretched across seas and hills to you. But I fear that my material body must leave you this day week; all sorts of things call me back to London."
"So soon?"
"My dear, do you realise that the summer is nearly over? While we have sat in the sunshine talking of old days, and watching the children grow their wings, two of our precious months are gone. Two of the hundred and twenty, Val!"
"Never mind, they 've left us something," said Val, kissing her.
From that day forward she discarded the blue veil. The French friends were amazed when they saw her without her shroudings. It had a curiously different effect upon them all. Something discontented and critical came into the still-lake eyes of Madame de Vervanne, but Celine used to like to come close and brush her cheek against Val's head as if she or Val were a kitten. The two boys seemed suddenly to wake up and realise that Val was still a factor in the game, at least Sacha did, and the look half gallant, half appraising, which he had so far kept only for Kitty and Haidee or any other pretty girl who happened along, began to lurk in his eye for Val also. With Rupert it was a little different. He had from the first recognised something vital and alluring behind the blue veil, and had never shown himself averse to leaving the girls to walk with Val, carrying her things, or holding one of Bran's hands while she held the other. There had come to exist between them one of those wordless sympathies that make for friendship. They spoke the same language, for there was one great bond between them--the wanderlust. Rupert, strange and rare thing in a Frenchman, had "the love for other lands!" Hoping to assuage his thirst for travel in a legitimate way, and one traditional in his family, he had entered for the Navy and had worked hard to get in from the Lycée St. Louis. But though his physical qualifications for that profession were perfect, he was no student and the exams. had been too much for him. Three times he had gone up, and failed, and the third time was the last. He was over nineteen, and the age limit for men entering the Navy was passed.
At odds and ends of times he told Val these things, and her heart went out to him while her mind greatly wondered at the stupidity of the French Government. Here was an ideal sailor lost to his country because he could not pass a difficult exam., that dealt largely with languages and mathematics, though you had only to watch him with his inferiors, the villagers and fishermen, to know that he possessed all the qualities characteristic of the good sailor and commander of men. Above all he was a lover of the sea. As an Englishman or American other gates to that "lover and mother of men" would have been open to him. But as a French gentleman having failed to get into the Navy, he was obliged to renounce the love of his life, for there was no other way, compatible with honour, of wooing her.
The next best thing then he declared was to join the Colonial Infantry, and achieve travel and adventure in foreign service. But such a decision thoroughly scandalised his family, for the Colonial Infantry is looked upon as the last resort of the destitute. Only men who have n't a penny of private income go to the Colonies, and it was considered a most unfitting fate for a man of such brilliant fortune as Rupert would be master of in a year or so. Even Sacha, who had no more than two hundred and twenty francs a year, disdained the Colonial Infantry and was in the "Dragons," preferring a cavalry regiment likely to be stationed within reach of Paris, living a life of gaiety on credit, always in debt, but always with an open chance of catching an heiress whose fortune would regulate his affairs and settle him in life.