"Oh! Halima!" he cried. "What were you about to do? A moment more and I should have been too late. Thank God that I came to in time. Ah! my love, what prompted this rash resolve?"
"I thought you dead; that I had killed you, and I could not live without you."
"Live with me, my darling; live for vengeance; for vengeance on your betrayer, as I mean to do."
"It shall be so," she cried fiercely. "To punish him we will devote our lives." Then, the stern expression softening into a look of such adoring love that the last shred of the man's resentment vanished, "Oh, Henri, Henri, my love, my life," she murmured; then sank sobbing on his breast.
He pillowed her lovely head upon his shoulder and caressed her fondly. For the moment, he forgot that another had possessed her. Then presently, when she had grown somewhat calmer, "Buonaparte has sailed for France," he said "and you are free. Forget the past, as I will strive to do, and find renewed happiness with me. Your father looks to see us man and wife. What say you, sweet?"
She raised her face suffused with tears, but smiling through them, to his, and in the lovelight in her eyes he read her answer.
He pressed her to his breast and kissed her again and again.
"Sweetheart," he said presently, "I have turned my back upon the army; henceforth I live for you alone."
"And revenge," she added sternly.
Then, hand in hand, they went into the house.