Varsieff listened as a desert listens for rain. He caught me by the shoulders when I ceased to speak—as if to shake something more from my mind and heart.
"A man must be half-divine to keep step with that woman," he said.
Then he changed the subject by remarking that Christonal was not half-divine—quite.
"Christonal is ambitious," he added.
"What has he done now?" I asked.
"He has ordered me to take the field——"
That turned on a red light in my brain. Varsieff was not a soldier. I knew instantly that Christonal was not pure—that he wanted personal power more than the good of the Cause. No one knew Varsieff's place better than he did. My friend could only have been ordered to the field for the same reason that David sent the husband of Bathsheba.
After the revolutionary signal went through, Varsieff and I found ourselves in the Galbraudin Foothills with thirty thousand men, and every man of them wanted to go home. Somehow the peasants thought that if they changed leaders, they would march home at once. They were willing to fight their way home; they had felt their own power. Varsieff loved them with a white passion.
"They won't miss, if we are true! They're clean. God love them—they're clean!"