He sat silent, his meditative fingertips laid together, his eyes fixed on the past which was the now only thing clearly visible to them.

“And the women?” I said.  “Were they as brave as the men?”

I had not spoken quite at random.  I had always heard that there had been as much of love as of war in Colonel Alingdon’s early career, and I hoped that my question might give a personal turn to his reminiscences.

“The women?” he repeated.  “They were braver—­for they had more to bear and less to do.  Italy could never have been saved without them.”

His eye had kindled and I detected in it the reflection of some vivid memory.  It was then that I asked him what was the bravest thing he had ever known of a woman’s doing.

The question was such a vague one that I hardly knew why I had put it, but to my surprise he answered almost at once, as though I had touched on a subject of frequent meditation.

“The bravest thing I ever saw done by a woman,” he said, “was brought about by an act of my own—­and one of which I am not particularly proud.  For that reason I have never spoken of it before—­there was a time when I didn’t even care to think of it—­but all that is past now.  She died years ago, and so did the Jack Alingdon she knew, and in telling you the story I am no more than the mouthpiece of an old tradition which some ancestor might have handed down to me.”

He leaned back, his clear blind gaze fixed smilingly on me, and I had the feeling that, in groping through the labyrinth of his young adventures, I had come unawares upon their central point.

II

When I was in Milan in ’forty-seven an unlucky thing happened to me.

I had been sent there to look over the ground by some of my Italian friends in England.  As an English officer I had no difficulty in getting into Milanese society, for England had for years been the refuge of the Italian fugitives, and I was known to be working in their interests.  It was just the kind of job I liked, and I never enjoyed life more than I did in those days.  There was a great deal going on—­good music, balls and theatres.  Milan kept up her gayety to the last.  The English were shocked by the insouciance of a race who could dance under the very nose of the usurper; but those who understood the situation knew that Milan was playing Brutus, and playing it uncommonly well.

I was in the thick of it all—­it was just the atmosphere to suit a young fellow of nine-and-twenty, with a healthy passion for waltzing and fighting.  But, as I said, an unlucky thing happened to me.  I was fool enough to fall in love with Donna Candida Falco.  You have heard of her, of course:  you know the share she had in the great work.  In a different way she was what the terrible Princess Belgioioso had been to an earlier generation.  But Donna Candida was not terrible.  She was quiet,