I laid the paper on my knee, and sat staring, scarcely breathing, as though I were afraid if I moved I would wake. I was trembling and cold, for I was at the parting of the ways, and I knew it. Beyond the light of the candles, beyond the dull red curtains jealously drawn against the winter landscape, beyond even the slight, white figure with its crown of burnished copper, I saw the swarming harbor of Marseilles. I saw the swaggering turcos in their scarlet breeches, the crowded troop-ships, and from every ship’s mast the glorious tri-color of France; the flag that in ten short years had again risen, that was flying over advancing columns in China, in Africa, in Madagascar; over armies that for Alsace Lorraine were giving France new and great colonies on every seaboard of the world. The thoughts that flew through my brain made my fingers clench until the nails bit into my palms. Even to dream of such happiness was actual pain. That this might come to me! To serve under the tri-color, to be a captain of the Grand Armee, to be one of the army reared and trained by Napoleon Bonaparte. I heard a cheery voice, and Lowell passed me, and advanced bowing toward Beatrice, and she turned and smiled at him. But as she rose, she saw my face. “Roy!” she cried. “What is it? What has happened?” I watched her coming toward me, as someone projected from another life, a wonderful, beautiful memory, from a life already far in the past. I handed her the cablegram and stood up stiffly. My joints were rigid and the blood was still cold in my veins. She read the message, and gave a little cry, and stood silent, gazing at me. I motioned her to give it to Lowell, who was looking at us anxiously, his eyes filled with concern. He kept his head lowered over the message for so long, that I thought he was reading it several times. When he again raised his face it was filled with surprise and disapproval. But beneath, I saw a dawning look which he could not keep down, of a great hope. It was as though he had been condemned to death, and the paper Beatrice had handed him to read had been his own reprieve. “Tell me,” said Beatrice. Her tone was as gentle and as solemn as the stroke of a bell, and as impersonal. It neither commended nor reproved. I saw that instantly she had determined to conceal her own wishes, to obliterate herself entirely, to let me know that, so far as she could affect my choice, I was a free agent. I looked appealingly from her to Lowell, and from Lowell back to Beatrice. I still was trembling with the fever the message had lit in me. When I tried to answer, my voice was hoarse and shaking. “It’s like drink!” I said. Lowell raised his eyes as though he meant to speak, and then lowered them and stepped back, leaving Beatrice and myself together.