"Courage, ami," she said, in low but firm tones. "You are going back to your own home, your own fair land, a land I love. It will need you, for the coming struggle will be terrible, much more terrible than you can imagine. But you will know many glorious emotions, horses galloping in the August sun; heaven-sent transports in which reason forsakes one, everything, indeed, which could make a woman like myself regret I am not a man.
"It will be terrible, very terrible. But over there, beyond the frontiers, other horsemen are springing into the saddle, horsemen called 'Big Heads', with astrakhan caps, curving sabres and leaden whips, who charge with their terrible cry of 'Huâ! huâ! huâ!' so that the stoutest hearts fail and the strongest arms fling away their weapons the better to flee the Cossacks of Tumene.
"Remember you have no cause for grief. And if you would have proof, think of the fate in store for her who is returning to Lautenburg without you."
"Alas!" I murmured through my tears. "Stay with us. Don't go back. Think of what may happen to you there!"
I heard her voice and it was almost a hiss.
"Child, child, I thought that after knowing me so well you would have learned a little of what hate can mean. Boose has come back. Have you really forgotten the fireplace in the armoury, the letters from the Congo, the whole treacherous mystery? Do you really think that just at the moment when I am about to unravel the secret of the crime I shall let the criminal go?"
My tears fell uncontrolled. Then suddenly a sensation of extreme relief exalted my despair, as for one second I felt the touch of her lips upon my forehead....
I started up with a terrible cry. Like one possessed I began to run after her down the road till I stumbled and fell full length in the ditch.
When I picked myself up, breathless and desperate, the car was nothing but a tiny grey speck in the east.
* * * * * *