Tragedy is inevitable; but comedy is within the gift and governance of mortals." For a moment again she was lost in the thought of Elise, of Valmond's vulgarity and commonness; and he had dared to speak words of love almost to her! She flushed to the hair, as she had done fifty times since she had seen him that moonlit night.

Ah, she had thought him the dreamer, the enthusiast--maybe, in kind, credulous moments, the great man he claimed to be; and he had only been the sensualist after all! That he did not love Elise, she knew well enough: he had been coldblooded; in this, at least, he was Napoleonic.
She had not spoken with him since that night; but she had had two long letters superscribed: "In Camp, Headquarters, Dalgrothe Mountain," and these had breathed only patriotism, the love of a cause, the warmth of a strong, virile temperament, almost a poetical abandon of unnamed ambitions and achievements.

She had read the letters again and again, for she had found it hard to reconcile them with her later knowledge of this man.

He wrote to her as to an ally, frankly, warmly.

She felt the genuine thing in him somewhere; and, in spite of all, she felt a sort of kinship for him.