Bertie was already gone, the two troops of the Regiment of Picardy having marched out a day or so before, the blare of their trumpets and the clatter of the horses' hoofs having awakened the city early. And he had seen Kate--dawn though it was--glancing from her window to look at him, to wave him her farewell. "Yet," he had said to her overnight, "it must not be for long, Kitty. It seems to me that we grow nearer to one another as trouble falls--at least, there can be no assassin's knife to come between us. Kate, I shall come and see you as often as I can get leave to visit Paris; even though you are in a King's--a future King's--house, as I still hope--I may come. Is it not so?" "Yes," she said, "you may come always. Oh, Bertie, we are parted for ever--our lives, our hopes, all--yet if I could not sometimes see you, know that you are well, happy--you will be happy, will you not, when this great sorrow is eased by time?--I think I should die. Surely it cannot be wrong, remembering what we once were to each other, what we once were to have been, to wish to know and hear of you." "What we once were to have been!" he repeated, in almost a whisper. "To have been. O Kate! O Kate! Those plans, those projects for the future!" His voice broke and failed him as he continued: "You have not forgotten them! Kate, do you remember how once we pictured ourselves growing old together, how we meditated on the time that should come when, our lives done with, we should rest together in some calm and peaceful grave?" "No," she said, "no," and sprang to her feet excitedly. "No! no! no! I will not remember--will recall nothing, for if I do I shall go mad. Remember nothing--'tis best so. Go, Bertie Elphinston, go to your duties, as I will go to mine. Let us forget everything--except--except----" she faltered, changing in a moment womanlike--"that it was I who ruined and cursed both our lives." He soothed her as best he could, reproaching himself for having revived such memories; reproaching himself, too, for the silence that had led to her believing him false. And once he said, as he had said in England when first they met again: "Mine was the fault, let mine be the blame. Yet, unhappily, both have had to suffer. Surely something must arise to end that suffering ere long." He did not know it, could not, indeed, know it; yet the end was far off still. There were more vigils of sorrow to be kept by both, more grief and pain to be endured. Nor when she said between her tears, "If we were to be parted again now, if I should never see your face more, my heart would break," could she know what lay in front of them--black, dark, and lowering.