And you are all on the volcano together.
Pah! I know the smell of it. The very streets, my friend, reek of
catastrophe."
Wanda was gay and light-hearted to the end. There was French blood in
her veins--that gay, good blood which stained the streets of Paris a
hundred years ago, and raised a standard of courage against adversity
for all the world to imitate so long as history shall exist.
Cartoner turned once in his saddle and saw her standing in the sunlight
waving him a farewell, with her eyes smiling and her lips hard pressed.
Then he rode on, with that small, small hope to help him through his
solitary wanderings which he knew to be identical with the hope of
Poland, for which the time was not yet ripe. He was the watcher who sees
most of the game, and knew that the time might never ripen till years
after Wanda and he had gone hence and were no more seen.
XXIX
IN A BY-WAY
There are few roads in Poland. Sooner or later, Cartoner must needs join
the great highway that enters Warsaw from the west, passing by the gates
of the cemetery.
Deulin, no doubt, knew this, for Cartoner found him, riding leisurely
away from the city, just beyond the cemetery. The Frenchman sat his
horse with a straight leg and arm which made Cartoner think of those
days ten years earlier, to which Deulin seldom referred, when this
white-haired dandy was a cavalry soldier, engaged in the painful
business of killing Germans.
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