The girl's head was bent, and she looked at her hands as they
lay in her lap and frowned at them, they seemed so white and
pretty and useless.

"Yes, you go on," she repeated, "and we stay here. You are a
man and able to go on. I know what that means. And you like
it," she added, with a glance of mingled admiration and fear.
"You are glad to fight and to risk death and to lead men on to
kill other men."

Kalonay drew lines in the sand with his ridingwhip, and did
not raise his head.

"I suppose it is because you are fighting for your home," the
girl continued, "and to set your country free, and that you
can live with your own people again, and because it is a holy
war. That must be it. Now that it is really come, I see it
all differently. I see things I had not thought about before.
They frighten me," she said.

The Prince raised his head and faced the girl, clasping the
end of his whip nervously in his hand. "If we should win the
island for the King, " he said, "I believe it will make a
great change in me. I shall be able to go freely then to my
home, as you say, to live there always, to give up the life I
have led on the Continent. It has been a foolish life--a
dog's life--and I have no one to blame for it but myself. I
made it worse than it need to have been. But if we win, I
have promised myself that I will not return to it; and if we
fall I shall not return to it, for the reason that I shall