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Most godlike of the three was Dubois. It was for him to decide;
the others at most might suggest. Her woman's soul went out to
this grave, handsome, still, old man, in a passion of instinctive
worship.
Once she had taken words of instruction from him direct. She had
awaited them in an ecstasy of happiness--and fear. For her
exaltation was made terrible by the dread that some error might
dishonour her....
She watched him now through the glass with all the unpenetrating
minuteness of an impassioned woman's observation.
He said little, she remarked. He looked but little at the maps.
The tall Englishman beside him was manifestly troubled by a swarm
of ideas, conflicting ideas; he craned his neck at every shifting
of the little red, blue, black, and yellow pieces on the board,
and wanted to draw the commander's attention to this and that.
Dubois listened, nodded, emitted a word and became still again,
brooding like the national eagle.
His eyes were so deeply sunken under his white eyebrows that she
could not see his eyes; his moustache overhung the mouth from
which those words of decision came. Viard, too, said little; he
was a dark man with a drooping head and melancholy, watchful
eyes. He was more intent upon the French right, which was feeling
its way now through Alsace to the Rhine. He was, she knew, an
old colleague of Dubois; he knew him better, she decided, he
trusted him more than this unfamiliar Englishman....
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