e
Marquise Jeanne was not one to be unaware of the abyss beneath, of which
the flaming color was a symbol. But she rather enjoyed the darts, if
only to fling them back more dazzlingly tipped.

The perspective of the Missouri boy was different. And his disdain was
different. A titled belle mattered little with him, and was apart, like
the girl in a spectacular chorus. Operettas and royal courts were shows,
which real men and women paid to see, and to support. He was a
deep-breathing, danger-nourished man of life and of things that count.
And his only cynicism, and even that unconscious, was the dry honest
sort which sheer unpolished naturalness bears to all things trivial and
vain and artificial. One can readily understand, then, the attitude of
such a man toward a playactor off the stage; toward a playactor, that
is, who thinks to impress the great, wide, live world with the
superficial mannerisms of his little playacting world. Here was Din
Driscoll, Jack Driscoll, Trooper Driscoll, here he was, traveling near a
handsome young woman who for the moment had been cut off from her
precious wee sphere. And he saw her outside of it, playing coquettishly,
and to her own mind, seriously; playing bewitchingly her shallow role
patterned after life, yet without once realizing the counterfeit. The
Western country boy, whatever his Cavalier stock, had a Puritanical
backbone in common with the whole American race. And without being aware
of it, his personal, private bearing toward the light and airy French
girl was a sneer, a tolerant, good-natured and indifferent sneer.

However, Mademoiselle la Marquise was neither amused nor hurt, because,
quite simply, she rode in happy oblivion of the rustic and his standards
for the appraising of a girl. He looked very straight of neck and spine,
and she wondered if he had been cradled in a saddle, but that was all.

Now if Lieutenant-Colonel Driscoll had had the slightest glimpse of what
was actually passing through the winsome and supposedly silly little
head behind him, there is no reliable telling into what change of
opinion he might have been jostled. But this is certain, that if he had
known, he could have saved himself some rare adventures afterward.

In Jacqueline's musings there was poetry and there were politics. The
poetry justified the politics; moreover, was their inspiration. A
dilettante such as Jacqueline, aesthetic and delicately sensitive, was
naturally a lover of the beau