He shook his head. "I do not think it."
"You mean you wouldn't go?" she asked.
He turned his face up to the sun with a peculiar gesture. "Who can say?" he said, with closed eyes. "Me, I think that the good God has other plans for me. I may be justified—I do not know. But I shall wear the uniform of the French Army—never again."
He spoke perfectly calmly, with absolute conviction; but there was that in his face that startled her, something she had never seen before.
She put out a hesitating hand, and touched his sleeve. "Bertie!"
Instantly he looked at her, saw the scared expression in her eyes, and, smiling, pressed her hand.
"Mais, Christine, these things—what are they? Ambition, success, honour—loss, failure, shame; they seem so great in this little life of mortality. But, after all, they are no more than the tools with which the good God shapes us to His destiny. He uses them, and when His work is done He throws them aside. We leave them behind us; we pass on to that which is greater." He paused a moment, and his eyes kindled as though he were on the verge of something further; then suddenly they went beyond her, and he relinquished her hand. "Madame has returned," he said. "Let us go!"
Looking up, Chris saw Aunt Philippa upon the terrace above them.
The expression on her relative's face was one of severe and undisguised disapproval, as her gaze rested upon the two in the garden. Chris, as she moved to meet her, felt a sudden flame of indignation at her heart. How dared Aunt Philippa look at them so?
"We have been waiting for you," she said, speaking in some haste to conceal her resentment. "Has anything happened?"