A Soldier of the Legion | Page 8

would--just as I wanted it to. But I didn't realize how I should
feel about it if I were going to die. The minute I came to myself
after--the accident, it rushed over me. Not the very first thought. That
was about myself. I wanted to know if my looks were gone. When they
had to say yes, I was glad--thankful--I could die. I'd have poisoned or
starved myself rather than live on. But no need of that. I think I could
let myself slip away any minute now. I'm just--holding on. For
something told me--I have a feeling that Jack himself came, and has
been here ever since, knowing all I had done and willing me to tell the
truth. I struggled a little against it, for why shouldn't you go on being
happy? Nothing was your fault. But it was borne in on me that I must
give you the chance to choose for yourself, and--another. That's why
Jack has come, perhaps. She is his daughter."
"There was a girl, our child. But--you can't understand unless I tell you
the story. I shall have strength. I feel I shall now--to get through with it.
Perhaps Jack will help. He was the one human being I ever loved better
than myself. That was real love! What I did was partly for his sake, I'm
honestly sure of that. He wouldn't have let me do it. But it made him
happy, not knowing----
"You've been told over and over how you were born in France, when
Jack and I had the Château de la Tour, on the Loire. That was true--the
one true thing. But you weren't born in the château. It wasn't for
nothing that you learned French almost as easily as you breathed--and
Latin, too. I suppose things like that are in people's blood. You are
French. If I had left you where you were, you would have grown up
Maxime Delatour. Delatour was your real father's name; he came
originally of the de la Tours, but his branch of the family had gone

down, somehow. Even the name was spelled differently, in the
common way. But they lived in the same neighbourhood--that is how it
all came about."
She paused, and gave a sigh like a faint moan. But Max was silent. He
could spare her nothing. She must go on to the end--if the end were
death. For there was somebody else, somewhere, who had to be put in
his place--the place he had thought was his.
"It was really because I loved Jack--too much," the veiled woman still
fretfully excused herself. "I should have been nobody, except for my
looks. He married me for my looks, because I was strong and tall and
fine, as a girl should be. He thought I could give him a splendid heir.
You know how things are arranged in this family. The property goes
from father to son, or a daughter, if there's no son. But they all pray for
sons. The Dorans want to carry on the name they're so proud of--just as
you have been proud! The wife of a Doran's important only if she's
beautiful, or if she has a son. I wanted to be important for both reasons.
Oh, how I wanted it!
"Jack took me to England for our honeymoon, and then to France. We
hadn't been in Paris long before I knew I was going to have a child.
Jack was so happy! He was sure it would be a boy--the most gorgeous
boy ever born. How I remember the day I told him, and he said that!
But all the time I had the presentiment it would be a girl. I felt guilty,
miserable, when Jack talked about the baby.... The doctors said it
would be safer for me not to have a sea voyage, so we decided to stop
in France till after the child came. We stayed in Paris at first, and Jack
and I used to go to the Louvre to see beautiful pictures and statues--for
the 'sake of the boy.'
"When the Salon opened we went there, and I saw a painting every one
was talking about--by a new artist. It was called 'Bella Donna,' just a
woman's head and shoulders. Max, she was like me! But she was
horrible, wicked--somehow deformed, though you couldn't see how.
You only felt it. And besides being like me, she was like a lynx. There
was one in the Zoo in London, with just her expression. Jack and I saw
it together, and he laughed, and said now he knew who my first

ancestress was. He didn't say anything about my looking like 'Bella
Donna,' but I knew he must have thought it. He got me away from the
picture as soon as