I will run to you (Henri)

Henri had received the letter with a heavy heart.

He knew it should not have saddened him; Helene was not made for what looked like it might well become a civil war, and if he should fall in battle, he did not know whether he wanted her to see it. It was a near impossibility for a young lady like her to join him in the forest, and the Sacred Heart had little to provide to her in the way of comfort. Except me, he thought, but that was selfish. His existence would not be enough to keep her safe, and it certainly would not make camp life a more natural thing for a young woman like Helene.

Even if the forest had always been the backdrop to their lives. The stage where they had fallen in love. Those had been friendlier times, or at least less political and more innocent ones.

Henri tried not to think too deeply on Helene's absence for fear that it would interfere with his resolve to stay in France and fight for Liberty. Helene had invoked that in her letter; this alone should have been enough to give him strength. Someday she would return to a free France, and then they would be side-by-side. And if he died before that day, then at least that same golden flame of Liberty would be his last gift both to his country and to the love of his life.

He heard someone shout his name, and though it sounded keenly like Helene's voice, it was impossible. She would be in England by now, safe from French unrest but also far beyond his own earshot. Almost certainly, the woman's voice he hear was the daughter or wife or mother or some other connection to one of the other men in the camp--Henri, after all, was hardly an unusual name.

And yet he found himself emerging from the tent to see what was going on anyway.

LADY HELENE DE ROCHAMBEAU