The horses had drawn close together. He put his right arm round her waist. She leaned back, face upturned. Their eyes met in a long deep look. Their mouths approached, were one. The flame of life burned high in them. Their horses' ears quivered to a louder roar of the distant guns.
Slowly they rode home together, by an easier, more roundabout path she showed him.
All that day those of the regiment not required for outposts laboured hard at the new entrenchments on the high, western edge of the ravine--a long, long line of delving men. Ranges were marked out; reserves of ammunition, food and water carried up. The energising source of all this activity, the colonel, laboured also, without haste and without rest. His brain worked quickly, coolly, definite in its decisions. She, his companion, unobtrusively at hand when required for information or material of defence, vanished unnoticed when her presence might become importunate. She quenched her personality, transfused, she felt, her life-force into him as he worked, an emotionless intellect. With his chefs-de-bataillon he elaborated plans of defence; nothing was left to chance; nothing could be misunderstood. Personally he supervised, corrected, the siting of the trenches, the emplacements of the mitrailleuses. In the afternoon he rode over to the colonel of the adjoining regiment, concerted arrangements. From the général de brigade he obtained the promise of a battery in support on the morrow.
But he was uneasy. Patrols sent out had failed to get into touch with the covering cavalry. The distant artillery roll was nearer. There had been one inexplicable burst of fire some miles away to the right. As night fell he ordered the new trenches to be manned with the bulk of his force, leaving outposts and grand'garde on the plateau above the ravine and down the valley. One company only he retained near the château.
That evening he sat again in the salon of his hostess. All was quiet. The dog snored in front of the hearth. At his request the countess seated herself at the piano, played dreamily with bowed head. The soft harmonies that awoke under her fingers seemed only to make the silence musical.
Suddenly a shot re-echoed loud along the valley; another and another followed. There was a burst of rapid, irregular fire, indefinitely prolonged. The colonel rushed to a window, flung it open, listened. The outposts down the valley were being driven in.