The sweat rose on Tignonville's brow as he stood listening, his arm round the girl--as he stood listening and waiting.

It is possible that when he had said a minute or two earlier that he would rather die a thousand times than live thus shamed, he had spoken beyond the mark.

Or it is possible that he had meant his words to the full.

But in this case he had not pictured what was to come, he had not gauged correctly his power of passive endurance.

He was as brave as the ordinary man, as the ordinary soldier; but martyrdom, the apotheosis of resignation, comes more naturally to women than to men, more hardly to men than to women.