Octavie felt as if she had passed into a stage of existence which was
like a dream, more poignant and real than life. There was the old gray
house with its sloping eaves. Amid the blur of green, and dimly, she
saw familiar faces and heard voices as if they came from far across the
fields, and Edmond was holding her. Her dead Edmond; her living Edmond,
and she felt the beating of his heart against her and the agonizing
rapture of his kisses striving to awake her. It was as if the spirit of
life and the awakening spring had given back the soul to her youth and
bade her rejoice.
It was many hours later that Octavie drew the locket from her bosom and
looked at Edmond with a questioning appeal in her glance.
"It was the night before an engagement," he said. "In the hurry of the
encounter, and the retreat next day, I never missed it till the fight
was over. I thought of course I had lost it in the heat of the struggle,
but it was stolen."
"Stolen," she shuddered, and thought of the dead soldier with his face
uplifted to the sky in an agony of supplication.
Edmond said nothing; but he thought of his messmate; the one who had
lain far back in the shadow; the one who had said nothing.