and wonderful voice.

As by studying a hive one feels the mysterious governing spirit, so he
felt the spirit of the Legion in its music, its restlessness, its
longings, its passions, and its ambitions, uttered and cried to heaven
in prayers and curses. As individuals the men were dumb, guarding their
secrets, striving to forget; and it was as if this smothered fire,
seeking outlet, had sprung from heart to heart, kindling and massing all
together in a vast, white-hot furnace. The music opened the doors of
this furnace, and the flames roared upward to the sky. In the dazzling
light of that strange fire, secrets could be read, if the eyes that saw
were not blinded. Bitterness and joy were there to see, and the blending
of all passions through which men ruin their lives, and need to remake
their souls. Yes, that was the Legion's call. Men came to it, in the
hope of remaking their souls. With his own drowned in the music of pain
and regeneration, Max went to the Salle d'Honneur to meet Colonel
DeLisle.

He knew where to find it, next to the barracks; a small, low building of
the same dull yellow, set back in a little garden with a few palms and
flowerbeds. Inside the gate was a red, blue, and white sentry box. But
Max entered unchallenged, because at the door of the house stood the
colonel, who came down a step to meet him. "Monsieur Doran!" he
exclaimed cordially, holding out his hand.

"Will you still offer me your hand, sir," Max asked wistfully, though he
smiled, "even if I've no name any more, and no country that I can claim?
Mademoiselle DeLisle has told you?"

"She has told me," echoed the elder man, shaking the younger's hand with
extra warmth. "I congratulate you on the chance of making a name for
yourself. I think from what I hear, and can judge, that you will do so,
in whatever path you choose. Have you chosen yet?"

"Not yet," Max confessed. "Neither a name nor the way to make it. Nor
the country most likely to make it in."

"As for that"--and Colonel DeLisle smiled--"we of the Legion are more
used to men without names and without countries than to those who have
them. Not that your case is allied to theirs. Shall we go in? I want to
thank you, as I've not been able to do yet, for your chivalrous
behaviour to my daughter. She has told me all about that, too--_all_.
And I had a feeling that this room, in which our Legion commemorates
honourable deeds, would be a place where you and I might talk."

As he