No longer a soldier ... he had taken off his uniform for the last time. He stood the same as when he had last left this chamber, save that it was then all before him, now all behind. He gazed at his own face, white above the white shirt, still noble and pleasing, still young, but frail and wasted and sad. Instinctively he turned, as he had done in his childish troubles, to the corner where St. George had stood. The loss struck him afresh as he, for a second time, beheld an empty bracket, and was symbolic also, for he had travelled far from the help of Christianity since he used to pray to St. George; yet the vacant place smote him. He turned at the opening of the door; a woman came towards him speechlessly, her lips moving and her eyes full of a kind of trembling light. He sprang to meet her and clasped her strongly; she thrust into his arms what seemed a lump of wood. “Safe, dear, safe. Did you think I had destroyed it?” she managed to say. He kissed her cheek and then her hands. She began crying with pleasure. “St. George, Luc,” she murmured. “I have kept him very carefully.” The young soldier looked at the idol of his childhood; his emotions reached the unbearable agony caused by dim recollections the hand of tenderness beckons from the past. He laid St. George on the bed. “Oh, my mother!” he cried, in a sinking voice. He fell on his knees, hid his face, and wept. CHAPTER VIII CLÉMENCE DE SÉGUY August had scorched the chestnut leaves and September withered them into golden scrolls, and still Luc de Clapiers remained idle, but with a burning heart, in the quiet home at Aix.