She thought a moment.

“We will see,” she said curtly.  “I think I can do it.  But go back, or you will be missed.  I will come to you soon.”

She left him, then, rapidly; drawing her hand quickly out of the clasp of his.

Cigarette felt her heart aching to its core for the sorrow of this man who was nothing to her.  He did not know what she had done for him in his suffering and delirium; he did not know how she had watched him all that night through, when she was weary, and bruised, and thirsting for sleep; he did not know; he held her hand as one comrade another’s, and never looked to see if her eyes were blue or were black, were laughing or tear-laden.  And yet she felt pain in his pain; she was always giving her life to his service.  Many besides the little Friend of the Flag beat back as folly the noblest and purest thing in them.

Cecil mechanically returned to the fire at which the men of his tribe were cooking their welcome supper, and sat down near them; rejecting, with a gesture, the most savory portion which, with their customary love and care for him, they were careful to select and bring to him.  There had never been a time when they had found him fail to prefer them to himself, or fail to do them kindly service, if of such he had a chance; and they returned it with all that rough and silent attachment that can be so strong and so stanch in lives that may be black with crime or red with slaughter.

He sat like a man in a dream, while the loosened tongues of the men ran noisily on a hundred themes as they chaffed each other, exchanged a fire of bivouac jokes more racy than decorous, and gave themselves to the enjoyment of their rude meal, that had to them that savor which long hunger alone can give.  Their voices came dull on his ear; the ruddy warmth of the fire was obscured to his sight; the din, the laughter, the stir all over the great camp, at the hour of dinner were lost on him.  He was insensible to everything except the innumerable memories that thronged upon him, and the aching longing that filled his heart with the sight of the friend of his youth.

“He said once that he would take my hand before all the world always, come what would,” he thought.  “Would he take it now, I wonder?  Yes; he never believed against me.”

And, as he thought, the same anguish of desire that had before smitten him to stand once more guiltless in the presence of men, and once more bear, untarnished, the name of his race and the honor of his fathers, shook him now as strong winds shake a tree that yet is fast rooted at its base, though it sway a while beneath the storm.

“How weak I am!” he thought bitterly.  “What does it matter?  Life is so short, one is a coward indeed to fret over it.  I cannot undo what I did.  I cannot, if I could.  To betray him now!  God! not for a kingdom, if I had the chance!  Besides, she may live still; and, even were she dead, to tarnish her name to clear my own would be a scoundrel’s baseness—­baseness that would fail as it merited; for who could be brought to believe me now?”