Through his glasses the colonel gazed into the depths of the ravine, where the white stone château glinted through the dark, thickly surrounding trees. A wisp of smoke ascended from one of the chimneys and he had to be content with that assurance that all was well. A patrol sent out in the first light had failed to reach it. All access to the château was commanded by spurs from the other side of the ravine. But apparently it was unoccupied by the enemy. He thought suddenly of the dog, wondered what had happened to it. In the stress of the night attack he had lost sight of it, forgotten it. Even as he searched his memory it came bounding along the trench towards him, nosed against his leg. There was something fastened to its collar, a letter.
As he read it, all the passion of his ascetic, sun-parched years, awakened by the exquisite charm of that slender pale woman lonely there below him, surged up in him, overmastering, obliterating all else. The eloquent eyes under the auburn hair were vivid to him, spoke to his deepest soul. Her letter was a prose lyric of passion wherein all emotions—longing, tenderness, anxiety, surrender, pride in her lover, even a flash of the doubt born of swiftly-given love—contended. It was revelatory of her inmost self as her speech had never been. She, it seemed, had also waited—waited. Some of the phrases in it—"The burning sacrament of your kiss"—"linked in an instant for eternity"—branded themselves upon his brain. In a whirl of cerebral excitement he tore out a page from his note-book, dashed off a letter not less ardent, not less than hers the ecstasy of a soul that lives at last in the consuming fire of love.
He attached it to the dog's collar, pointed away. The animal sprang over the low parapet, disappeared in the undergrowth below.
An artillery officer came up, reported himself as the observer of the newly arrived battery. He evinced much professional interest in the château, seemed eager to make it the target for his guns. The colonel explained the situation.
All through the multitudinous tasks and responsibilities of the day his soul yearned out to the lonely woman below. To have risked his life in an endeavour to see her would have been more than a joy, it would have been the satisfaction of a need of his being—but his life was pledged to France. To him his duty was a religion with which his love did not conflict, nay both, upon the summit of his life, blended and were one. Yet tempted, he found himself speculating upon the possibility of creeping down at nightfall.
But night saw the intense glare of three German searchlights shoot out of the darkness. A storm of shrapnel burst fiercely over the trenches of the Zouaves. A wild attack of shadowy forms surging up out of the undergrowth beat against the parapet, ebbed back in an inferno of noise from the long line of countless stabs of flame, was hurled into the ravine under the reiterated crashes, the sudden livid flares of shrapnel from the battery behind.
Down below, at the highest window of the château, the countess stood looking out into the night, her lover's letter pressed close against her bosom. High above her flickered and spurted the endless rifle flashes from his trenches, paling the stars above the dark hill. The noise of the conflict, the shouts and cries amid the re-echoing din, was a tribute to his power. She gloried in it, exulted when the attack subsided, withdrew in a clamour of voices past the château to the hill behind.
Descending, she wrote yet another letter to him—a proud pæan of love triumphant. Then suddenly she flung herself, face downward, arms outstretched, across the table in a passion of irrepressible tears. She lay thus a long time, until the heaving of her body ceased and she slept, her cheek upon the letter.
The morning was yet young when she despatched the dog once more upon his mission to her lover. Save for an occasional shot, the opposing trenches were quiet. Stretcher parties were at work in the valley. Waited upon by the ancient Marie—eloquent in her protestations of terror during the night—she breakfasted, counting the minutes until the return of her messenger. Roland arrived, pleased with himself, as his energetic tail testified. Once more with swelling breast and radiant face she read her lover's letter, passionate as the first. In a postscript, it begged her to give no information that might imperil her.
During the day the battle woke again between the trenches at the head of the ravine, continued in fierce spasms hour after hour. In the afternoon she wrote another letter, despatched it and received an answer. She was strangely, exaltedly happy. He was holding firm. No one came to the château. At night she again posted herself at the window to watch the flashes from his trenches.