She backed half a step, and quite needlessly I let it go. Then she bade me not forget I had promised her the words of a certain song. "Want them? Indeed, yes! Did you not say it was an unpublished song written by a messmate of yours?--oh, Mr. Smith! I see why you stammer! You said 'a member of your mess'! oh!--oh!--oh!--you wrote it, yourself! And you wrote it to-day! That explains--" She drew an awesome breath, rose to her toes and knit her knuckles under her throat. I was in the sweetest consternation. With the end of her braid once more in my fingers I made her promise to keep the dark secret, and so recited them. "Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes! Turn away thine eyes ere my bosom burn, Lit with foolish hope to hear thy fondling sighs, Like yon twilight dove's, breathe, Return, return! Turn away thine eyes, maiden passing fair. O maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes! "Maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes! Turn again thine eyes, love's true mercy learn. Breathe, O! breathe to me, as these love-languid skies To yon twilight star breathe, Return, return! Turn again thine eyes, maiden passing fair. O maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes!" "Mis-ter Smith! you wrote that?--to-day! Wh'--who is she?" "One too modest," I murmured, "to know her own portrait." I clutched the braid emotionally and let it go intending to retake it; but she dropped it behind her and said I was too imaginative to be safe. I stiffened proudly, turned and mounted my steed, but her eyes drew mine. I pressed close, bent over the saddle-bow, and said, "Good-bye, Camille." "Good-bye." I could barely hear it. "Oh!--good-bye, just anybody?" I asked; and thereupon she gathered up all her misplaced trust in me, all her maiden ignorance of what is in man, and all her sweet daring, to murmur-- "Good-bye,--Dick." I caught my breath in rapture and rode away. She was there yet when I looked back--once--and again--and again. And when I looked a last time still she had not moved. Oh, Camille, Camille! to this day I see you standing there in pink-edged white, pure, silent, motionless, a summer-evening cloud; while I, my body clad in its unstained--only because unused--new uniform, and my soul tricked out in the foolhardiness and vanity of a boy's innocence, rode forth into the night and into the talons of overmastering temptation. XIV CORALIE ROTHVELT The night was still and sultry. At one of the many camp-fires on the edge of the road I saw the Arkansas colonel sitting cross-legged on the ground, in trousers, socks and undershirt, playing poker.