"Ay, if I had but the chance! If I might be with you long enough, if I might reawaken the old tenderness!—But I forget; treason in our camp, you say. There is danger, then—ay, there's always the possibility. The devil's in it, that I must tear myself from you now; that I must part with you while matters are so wrong between us; that I must leave you when I would give ten years of life for one hour to win your love back! But you will take my hand, let me kiss you once—you will do that for the sake of the old times—and then I will be gone!"
"Be gone? Where?"
"Back to camp, of course, to give warning of this expedition."
"'Tis impossible! Tis hours—"
"'Tis not impossible—I will outride them. They wouldn't have started before dark."
"You would only overtake them, at your best. Do you think they would let you pass?"
"Poh! I know every road. I can ride around them. I'll put the army in readiness for 'em, treason or no treason! For the present, good-bye—"
The look in his face—of power and resolution—gave her a sudden sense of her triumph slipping out of her grasp.
"You must not go!" she cried, quite awakened to the peril of the situation to her enterprise.
"I must! Good-bye! One kiss, I beg!"