here for the night. And the charm, you say, is not so potent during the
day."

"You may be under it already," she said. "I wonder if you are."

"Ah!" Bertrand's tone was suddenly grave. "That also is possible."

"I wonder," she said again. "That may be what made you knock your head.
One never knows. But tell me about your magic. What is it? What do you
do?"

"I think," he said, "I calculate. And I build."

"What do you build?"

"It is a secret," he said.

"But you will tell me!"

"Why, Christine?"

"Because I do so want to know," she urged coaxingly. "And I can keep
secrets really. All English people can. Try me!" She thrust forward the
little finger of the hand that his arm held. "You must pinch it," she
explained, "as hard as you can. And if I don't even squeak you will know
I am to be trusted."

He took the finger thus heroically proffered, hesitated a second, then
put it softly to his lips. "I would trust you with my life," he said,
"with my honour, with all that I possess. Christine, I am an inventor,
and I am at the edge of a great discovery--a discovery that will make the
French artillery the greatest in the world."

"Goodness!" said Chris, with a gasp; then in haste, "Not--not greater
than ours surely!"

He turned to her impetuously in the darkness, her hands caught into his.
"Ah, you say that because you are English! And the English--_il faut que
les anglais soient toujours, toujours les premiers_--is it not so--always
and in all things? Yet consider! What is it--this national rivalry--this
strife for the supremacy? We laugh at it, you and I. We know what it is
worth."

But Chris was too young to laugh. "I don't quite like it," she said. "I'm
very sorry. Shall we talk of something else?"

But he still held her hands closely clasped. "Listen, Christine, my
little one! These things they pass. They are as a dream in the midst of a
great Reality. They are not the materials of which we weave our life.
Envy, ambition, success--what are they? Only a procession that marches
under the windows, and we look out above them, you and I, to the great
heaven and the sun; and"--something more than eagerness thrilled suddenly
in his voice--"we know that that is our life--the Spark Eternal that
nothing can ever quench."

He ceased abruptly. Cinders had stirred in his sleep, and she had drawn
away one of her hands to fondle him.

There fell short silence. Then, her voice a little doubtful, she spoke--

"You