At last she staggered to her feet and turned to the open door. The tents
lay silent in the moonshine, but wayward lights flickered in the
sumptuous dusk, and the quiet of the hills hung like a canopy over the
bivouac of the little army. No token of misfortune came out of this
peaceful encampment, no omen of disaster crossed the long lane of drowsy
fires and huge amorous shadows. The sense of doom was in the girl's own
heart, not in this deep cradle of the hills.
Now and again a sentinel crossed the misty line of vision, silent, and
majestically tall, in the soft haze, which came down from Dalgrothe
Mountain and fell like a delicate silver veil before the face of the
valley.
As she looked, lost in a kind of dream, there floated up from the distant
tent the refrain she knew so well:
"Oh, say, where goes your love?
O gai, vine le roi!"
Her hand caught her bosom as if to stifle a sudden pain. That song had
been the keynote to her new life, and it seemed now as if it were also to
be the final benediction. All her spirit gathered itself up for a great
resolution: she would not yield to this invading weakness, this misery of
body and mind.
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