He shrugged his shoulders.
“Then we will take it for granted,” he exclaimed, and added—“Come, here is a cloak. It will make a little soldier of you. I will send the man for the news at once, and you must drink a glass of wine. These nights fall cold, and the damp makes them worse. If we had known in Strasburg how we should meet again—”
He stopped abruptly when he saw the shadow steal over her face. He had begun to forget, he thought, that she was another man’s wife. Yet every act, every word of his was full of a strong man’s pity for her—the little helpless girl out there amid that saturnalia of death and of defeat. She, on her part, did not ask herself why she remained with him. No fear of his friendship drove her from the camp. She did not know that he would have laid down his life for her, that he loved her as few men love women. It was an odd meeting, that was all; a lucky meeting. And how Edmond would laugh to see her sitting there with a Prussian cloak about her shoulders and Prussians offering her wine, and Guillaumette drinking the troopers’ beer, and joining in a crescendo of laughter, high-pitched and piercing.
News of the lancers came in an hour. She read in Brandon’s face the truth of it, and started up from the seat of logs they had found her with beating heart and a face that was very wan and white.
“Oh, my God,” she cried, “he is dead!”
“Not so, Beatrix—he is unharmed—”
“At Wörth—?”
“No; they will send him to Mainz.”
“He is a prisoner, then?”
He did not answer her. She stood gazing into the fire as one who sees pictures there. Guillaumette was still amusing the troopers.