e
known some fair foreigner who could only faintly stammer in his native
tongue, and that the habit of address had then become fixed upon him for
moments of emotion.

He repeated his question.

"Oui," responded the girl. He kissed his fingers lightly to her, and
waved the tribute in her direction, as if it could be wafted across the
room.

"Chere artiste," said he, with a voice of conviction.

"And now the bacarolle," he pleaded.

"There are many bacarolles," she objected.

"I know, I know," he said, "and yet, after all, there is only one
bacarolle."

"All right," she answered, obediently, and played on. The music died
away, and the girl in her fought against the response that she knew was
coming. She began turning over sheets of music on the rack. But the
Commandant was not to be balked.

"Parlez-vous francais?" he inquired, "vous, Mademoiselle Hilda."

"Oui, mon Commandant," she answered.

"Chere artiste," he said; "chere artiste."

"Ah, those two voices," he went on with a sigh; "they go with you,
wherever you are. It is music, that night of love and joy. And here we
sit--"

"Yes, yes," interrupted Mrs. Bracher, who did not care to have an
evening of gaiety sag to melancholy; "how about a little Cesar Franck?"

"Yes, surely," agreed the Commandant, cheerily; "our own composer, you
know, though we never gave him his due."

Hilda ran through the opening of the D Minor.

"Now it is your turn," said she.

"My fingers are something stiff, with these cold nights by the window,"
replied the Commandant, "but certainly I will endeavor to play."

He seated himself at the instrument.

"Chere artiste," he murmured to the girl, who was retreating to the
lounge.

The Commandant played well. He needed no notes, for he was stored with
remembered bits. He often played to them of an evening, before he took
his turn on watch. He played quietly along for a little. Out of the dark
at their north window, there came the piping of a night bird. Birds were
the only creatures seemingly untouched by the war. The fields were
crowded thick with the bodies of faithful cavalry and artillery horses.
Dogs and cats had wasted away in the seared area. Cattle had been mowed
down by machine guns. Heavy sows and their tiny yelping litter, were
shot as they trundled about, or, surviving the far-cast invisible death,
were spitted for soldiers' rations. And with men, the church-yard and
the fields, and even the running streams, wer