"He may have returned before we awoke," said John. "The Arrow flies very fast. Like as not he delivered his message, whatever it was, and was off again with another in a few minutes. He may be sixty or eighty miles from here now."
"Odd fellow that Lannes," said Carstairs. "Do you know anything about his people, Scott?"
"Not much except that he has a mother and sister. I spent a night with them at their house in Paris. I've heard that French family ties are strong, but they seemed to look upon him as the weak would regard a great champion, a knight, in their own phrase, without fear and without reproach."
"That speaks well for him."
John's mind traveled back to that modest house across the Seine. It had done so often during all the days and nights of fighting, and he thought of Julie Lannes in her simple white dress, Julie with the golden hair and the bluest of blue eyes. She had not seemed at all foreign to him. In her simplicity and openness she was like one of the young girls of his own country. French custom might have compelled a difference at other times, but war was a great leveler of manners. She and her mother must have suffered agonies of suspense, when the guns were thundering almost within hearing of Paris, suspense for Philip, suspense for their country, and suspense in a less degree for themselves. Maybe Lannes had gone back once in the Arrow to show them that he was safe, and to tell them that, for the time at least, the great German invasion had been rolled back.
"A penny for your dream!" said Carstairs.
"Not for a penny, nor for a pound, nor for anything else," said John. "This dream of mine had something brilliant and beautiful and pure at the very core of it, and I'm not selling."
Carstairs looked curiously at him, and a light smile played across his face. But the smile was sympathetic.
"I'll wager you that with two guesses I can tell the nature of your dream," he said.
John shook his head, and he, too, smiled.