s much as
her beauty that appealed to John. At no time in all the dangers through
which they had gone had he seen her flinch. He had heard much of the
courage shown by the women in the great Civil War in his own country,
and this maid of France was proving anew that a girl could be as brave
as a man.

"May I take you down to dinner, Mademoiselle Lannes?" he asked.

"You may, Mr. Scott," she replied, and they walked together down the
hall and the stairway into the great dining-room. Antoine, a napkin on
his arm, ceremoniously held open the door for them and Suzanne showed
them to opposite seats at a small table by the window.

"We have found an abundance, Mademoiselle," she said, "and you shall be
served as if you were real guests."

The memory of that dinner will always be vivid in the mind of John
Scott, though he live to be a hundred. Julie and he were invincible
youth that always blooms anew. War and its horrors and dangers fell from
them. Their sportive fancy that they were guests in the hotel and
nothing ailed the world just then held true. As Antoine and his daughter
served the excellent dinner that Suzanne had prepared these two found
amusement in everything. The barrier of race that had been becoming more
slender all the time melted quite away, and they were boy and girl
looking into each other's eyes across a narrow table.

Picard and Suzanne even felt a touch of their fantastic spirits.
Suzanne from the north of France, powerful in her prejudices, a
Frenchwoman to the core, had viewed John from the first with a distinct
hostility, softening slowly, very slowly, as time passed. It was not
that she disliked his voice, his figure, his manner, or anything about
him. He was a brave and true young man and he had rendered great service
to the contemporary house of Lannes, but he was not a Frenchman.

But it seemed to Suzanne, as she served the courses and watched with an
eye which nothing escaped, that Monsieur Jean the Scott was becoming a
Frenchman--almost at least. She had seen young Frenchmen act very much
as the young American was acting. The Frenchman, too, would lean forward
to speak when the girl to whom he was speaking was as lovely as her
Mademoiselle Julie. No, that was impossible! None other was as lovely as
her Mademoiselle Julie. The glow that illumined his face was just the
same, quite of the best French manner, too. She had seen people who
_were_ people and she knew. She admitted, too, that he w