the tap of her wine-barrel.
She was not used to that style of salutation. She half liked it--half
resented it. It made her wish, with an impatient scorn for the wish,
that she knew how to read and had not her hair cut short like a boy's--a
weakness the little vivandiere had never been visited with before.

"Morbleu!" she said pettishly. "You are too fine for us mon brave. In
what country, I should wonder, does one learn such dainty ceremony as
that?"

"Where should one learn courtesies, if not in France?" he answered
wearily. He had danced with this girl-soldier the night before at a
guinguette ball, seeing her for the first time, for it was almost the
first time he had been in the city since the night when he had
thrown the dice, and lost ten Napoleons and the Bedouins to Claude de
Chanrellon; but his thoughts were far from her in this moment.

"Ouf! You have learnt carte and tierce with your tongue!" cried
Cigarette, provoked to receive no more compliment than that. From
generals and staff officers, as from drummers and trumpeters, she was
accustomed to flattery and wooing, luscious as sugared chocolate, and
ardent as flirtation, with a barrack flavor about it, commonly is; she
would, as often as not, to be sure, finish it with the butt-end of her
pistol, or the butt-end of some bit of stinging sarcasm, but still, for
all that, she liked it, and resented its omission. "They say you are
English, but I don't believe it; you speak too soft, and you sound the
double L's too well. A Spaniard?"

"Do you find me so devout a Catholic that you think so?"

She laughed. "A Greek, then?"

"Still worse. Have you seen me cheat at cards?"

"An Austrian? You waltz like a White Coat!"

He shook his head.

She stamped her little foot into the ground--a foot fit for a model,
with its shapely military boot; spurred, too, for Cigarette rode like a
circus-rider.

"Say what you are, then, at once."

"A soldier of France. Can you wish me more?"

For the first time her eyes flashed and softened--her one love was the
tricolor.

"True!" she said simply. "But you were not always a soldier of France?
You joined, they say, twelve years ago. What were you before then?"

She here cast herself down in front of him, and, with her elbows on
the sand, and her chin on her hands, watched him with all the frank
curiosity and unmoved nonchalance imaginable, as she launched the
question point-blank.

"Before!" he said slowly. "Well--a foo