It seemed to Isabey the most solemn hour of his life when he found himself alone with Angela in the darkness of the heart of the forest. It was as if a kindly fate had given him this last farewell. He never expected, or even desired, to see her as Neville Tremaine’s wife. He could not disguise from himself what Angela, in her simplicity, had not been able to disguise from him--that her soul answered to his as the echo answers to the voice and a lake reflects the sky. She was so little sophisticated, so frank, so fearless, that she betrayed herself in every word and glance to his practiced eye. But not to others did she betray herself. Though innocent she was not ignorant, and Isabey felt a lofty pride in the same discretion of which Lyddon had spoken. He remembered with a smile how she always brought in Neville’s name, as if it were a talisman, when they found themselves on dangerous ground. Isabey himself had been enough on his guard to escape a rebuff from her or even a rebuking glance. He could look Neville Tremaine in the eye without fear or reproach. Then, not being a man to dwell wholly upon his own sufferings, his mind turned to Richard Tremaine. Ah, there again was loss without repair! In war men grow not only familiar with but contemptuous of death. Isabey had, however, but one Richard Tremaine to lose, and when he remembered this he stopped in his halting and stealthy walk up and down upon the pine needles and felt as if a bolt had entered his heart. It was not meant, he thought, that he should ever have wife or friend. At ten o’clock, when he intended to rouse Angela, he went close to her and found her sleeping so soundly he had not the heart to waken her. It would, perhaps, be just as well if they reached the lines at six o’clock in the morning. That would still give him time to return within twenty-four hours.