She could not; she slowly, gently shook her hand, as if to say that it was not her fault.  Her close-pressed lips were already contracting beneath the touch of death.  With her unbound hair streaming around her, and her head resting amid the folds of the blood-red banner, all her life now centred in her eyes, those black eyes glittering in her white face.  Silvere sobbed.  The glance of those big sorrowful eyes filled him with distress.  He read in them bitter, immense regret for life.  Miette was telling him that she was going away all alone, and before their bridal day; that she was leaving him ere she had become his wife.  She was telling him, too, that it was he who had willed that it should be so, that he should have loved her as other lovers love their sweethearts.  In the hour of her agony, amidst that stern conflict between death and her vigorous nature, she bewailed her fate in going like that to the grave.  Silvere, as he bent over her, understood how bitter was the pang.  He recalled their caresses, how she had hung round his neck, and had yearned for his love, but he had not understood, and now she was departing from him for evermore.  Bitterly grieved at the thought that throughout her eternal rest she would remember him solely as a companion and playfellow, he kissed her on the bosom while his hot tears fell upon her lips.  Those passionate kisses brought a last gleam of joy to Miette’s eyes.  They loved one another, and their idyll ended in death.

But Silvere could not believe she was dying.  “No, you will see, it will prove only a trifle,” he declared.  “Don’t speak if it hurts you.  Wait, I will raise your head and then warm you; your hands are quite frozen.”

But the fusillade had begun afresh, this time on the left, in the olive plantations.  A dull sound of galloping cavalry rose from the plain.  At times there were loud cries, as of men being slaughtered.  And thick clouds of smoke were wafted along and hung about the elms on the esplanade.  Silvere for his part no longer heard or saw anything.  Pascal, who came running down in the direction of the plain, saw him stretched upon the ground, and hastened towards him, thinking he was wounded.  As soon as the young man saw him, he clutched hold of him and pointed to Miette.

“Look,” he said, “she’s wounded, there, under the breast.  Ah! how good of you to come!  You will save her.”

At that moment, however, a slight convulsion shook the dying girl.  A pain-fraught shadow passed over her face, and as her contracted lips suddenly parted, a faint sigh escaped from them.  Her eyes, still wide open, gazed fixedly at the young man.

Then Pascal, who had stooped down, rose again, saying in a low voice:  “She is dead.”

Dead!  Silvere reeled at the sound of the word.  He had been kneeling forward, but now he sank back, as though thrown down by Miette’s last faint sigh.

“Dead!  Dead!” he repeated; “it is not true, she is looking at me.  See how she is looking at me!”