That night we could set no guard. Both of us were weary in spirit and in body. There was no one to relieve me if I watched, and Giulia could not rest unless I was so near that her hand could always touch me. I thought of a plan: it was to picket the horses so that there should be no danger of losing them, and then to withdraw about four hundred yards from the spot where they were placed. The horses might attract enemies in the night, but if we were some distance away, we ought to be in comparative safety. Giulia assented; and when I had settled the horses for the night I helped her to a spot a good distance from them, and after a little interval, during which Giulia wept and I comforted her as best I could, we lay down to rest in the desert side by side. As I was sleeping, as a soldier sleeps who has learned to rest with aching body or even with aching heart, Giulia clasped me by the shoulder, and brought me back to active thought and life.
"What! is there an attack?" And I tried for my rifle in the dark.
"No, no! oh no! it is not that. I am ill; oh, what shall I do!"
But I will not tell the story. The night wore on, and when dawn came it was only to show me that the best of all my comrades, the comrade who made life happy and a thing of joy, the woman who had loved and trusted, ever true, ever unchanging, was about to pass out of my life for ever. The end came shortly after the dawn. It was quiet, for poor Giulia was worn out with all that she had gone through, and, when all was over, Arab or Berber or robber of the road might take my life, and I should not resist. What was the good of life since I had lost my love?
All that day I stayed quietly by the dead body of my dear one. I forgot the horses; I forgot the danger of attack; I forgot all things save that I was at last alone, really alone, in the world. I thought of those whom I had loved and lost—Nicholas the Russian, the English corporal, Mac; but every moment my thoughts reverted to the greatest loss of all—the loss of her whose corpse, pale and bloodless, it is true, but with an indefinable beauty of feature and expression, lay quiet and still upon the sand.
In the evening I dug a grave with my bayonet, and gently, tenderly, laid there to rest the remains of her who had loved me with so great a love.
There is little more to be said. I had no difficulty in making my way to Tangier. I was not molested, nor did I molest anyone. The only thought in my mind was to get as far away as possible from Africa—the land for me of so many chances and changes, of exquisite love and still more exquisite sorrow. I was hopeless, heartless, not in the sense that I was heartless to others—I was heartless only for myself.
From Tangier I crossed to Spain, and there found a relation at Salamanca—one of those men who, studying for the priesthood, choose the foreign colleges rather than Maynooth. He helped me with money to reach Ireland, but from him, as from all others, I kept the true story, the story, I may now say, of "twenty golden years ago."
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH.