“Dead!”
“The word seems to mean nothing. I have a child here, dying too. I thought it might be happier dying in some one’s arms.”
It was exactly his own thought about Georges; he smiled with his courteous, sad sweetness, and putting the lieutenant’s head gently on one of the still rolled-up curtains, rose.
“We are on the heights, are we not?” asked Carola. “I seem to have been climbing all day.”
He approached her. “I think we are very high up,” he said gently. “Will you give me the child, Mademoiselle?”
She resigned the pitiful burden without a word; the Marquis shuddered as he felt the frail weight in his arms.
“So cold,” he murmured. “How could they bring children on such a march as this! How far have you carried him?” he added.
“Since morning,” answered Carola; “and it is a girl, Monsieur.”
The Marquis looked down into the tiny crumpled white face in the folds of the fur mantle, and laid the little creature down beside d’Espagnac.
“What can we do?” asked the Countess, in a broken voice.