Jack Ryder's tone was questioningly cynical and its raillery cut
through her brief sham of pride.

"So I thought, too, last night." A tinge of infinite disillusionment
was in her young voice. "But it is not so."

"Then you accept--?"

The shrouded head nodded.

"But you can't want to," he broke out with sudden heat. "You don't
know him at all, do you--this general?"

"Know him? I have never seen his face nor heard his voice--and I
would die first," she added with bitter, helpless fierceness under
her breath.

The veil muffled that from him. "But why--why?" he repeated in an
angrily puzzled way.

She made a little gesture of weary impotence. Out of the dark
draperies her hands were like white fluttering butterflies.

"What can I do?"

"I should think you could do the Old Harry of a lot."

"Weep?" said the girl with a pale irony not lost upon him.

"Weep--or row. Or run," he added, almost reluctantly.