"
"I know," she admitted, stubbornly, "but I wanted to see him; I have
been so lonely for him, and this was the only possible way."
Brant felt a wave of uncontrollable sympathy sweep across him, even
while he was beginning to hate this man, who, he felt, had stolen a
passage into the innocent heart of a girl not half his age, one knowing
little of the ways of the world. He saw again that bare desert, with
those two half-dead figures clasped in each other's arms, and felt that
he understood the whole miserable story of a girl's trust, a man's
perfidy.
"May I walk beside you until you meet him?" he asked.
"You will not quarrel?"
"No; at least not through any fault of mine."
A few steps in the moonlight and she again took his arm, although they
scarcely spoke. At the bridge she withdrew her hand and uttered a
peculiar call, and Hampton stepped forth from the concealing bushes,
his head bare, his hat in his hand.
"I scarcely thought it could be you," he said, seemingly not altogether
satisfied, "as you were accompanied by another."
The younger man took a single step forward, his uniform showing in the
moonlight.
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