“Oh, yes--we’re to march her across Paris to the tune of the Marseillaise.... We’ve been practising the Marseillaise all night, Gaston Latour’s hunting-horn going full blare. We’ve been raising the ghosts--I can--promise you.... It’s a strange--thing--how few patriots know the words of--their own--national anthem! However--tra-la-la, sung loud enough--goes a long way--to--express a patriot’s parochial emotion. An-extra--ordinary--long--way----” He mumbled into a drowse. Betty made a last effort to tell him, before he should relapse into sleep: “Such a strange thing has happened--to me--Noll,” she said. “Y-e-s?” drawled he, missing the shy hint. There was a long silence. His heavy breathing told that he slept. For two weary hours, Betty sat up in bed lest sleep should overcome her, and Noll miss his rouse. And brooding there, her chin on her knees, her sorry vigil dragged through the laggard minutes. As the clocks struck six across the city’s roofs, she crept out of bed and roused Noll; and he, after much rousing, got up, vague-eyed and wit-wandering, embraced her, and, searching for his hat, put it on and lurched out of the room in a drowsy daze. Betty reeled from the cruelty--stumbled--and was overwhelmed with sickness. CHAPTER LXV _Wherein Betty walks into the Desert_ Betty was dressed for a journey. On the floor, near the table whereat she sat writing a letter, lay a battered old black trunk, strapped and labelled. The day was chilly grey without. As she blotted the last lines, there came to her hearing, from the thoroughfares of the Latin Quarter below, rollicking snatches of song, and the stir of students in noisy holiday mood. Betty brushed aside her tears, and read carefully the letter she had just signed: “NOLL, A year ago I was writing you love-letters--delightful deliriousness more full of meaning than of sense. To-day I am writing farewell. It is the most eager desire of my life, of my whole being, that you should be free--to be a man. I came to you, joined my life to yours, that you should be free to realize yourself, most wholly free--in body, in intellect, and in conscience. I now take back my life from yours, that, having failed with me to achieve freedom for yourself or for me, you shall be free to become free--or as near free as you may be. Your life is become full of little secrecies--of half-told tales--of timid reservations--of pompously withheld mysteries--of little excuses. I can only live, for close companionship, with a man; and a man shall not fear himself--nor another. You must live free from the need to hide yourself from me. Therefore, to give you back to yourself I withdraw myself.