me with a laugh which ended in a sigh. "Child, little
child," he continued as he bent over my hand to kiss it as he did each
night before he conducted me to the head of the stairs leading down
into my cabin, "above all take unto yourself all that is possible of
joy in the present, for we do not know what the supply will be for the
future. Perhaps it will be like the harvests of France--burned up in a
world-conflagration."

"Ah, but, _mon Capitaine_, will you not dance with me once
to-night for a joy. It will be our last on the ship before we land
to-morrow. You have never danced with me and to-morrow you are lost
from me into the wilds of that English Canada." And as I spoke I held
out my arms to him and began to hum the music of that remarkable
Chin-Chin fox dance that I had been dancing below with Mr. William
Raines and which the band had just begun to play again. Of course, I
knew that I must be very lovely in that young moonlight in one of the
frocks that Nannette had purchased from her very talented cousin, the
_couturiere_ on Rue Leopold, and I could see no reason why I
should not make a happiness for the great gentleman of France as well
as the young boy from Philadelphia and also the one from Saint Louis.

"You _are_ a daredevil, Mademoiselle, to propose the dance to
powder-stained Armond Lasselles, but the joy of you is of a greatness
and I feel from it a healing in the night of my soul."

And he reached out in the moonlight and took me into his arms and
danced me along that deck with a grace that it would not be possible
for either the one from Philadelphia or the one from Saint Louis to
imitate. That nice but very ponderous lady from the State of
Cincinnati who regarded us from her steamer chair, enjoyed it as much
as did I, and she clapped her large hands as Monsieur le Capitaine
swung me around into the quietness beyond one of the tall chimneys for
smoke from the engine.

"This is good-bye, _mon enfant_, for I leave the ship at dawn
with the tug, so that I do avoid those reporters from newspapers and
the contract conspirators. I have advised Nannette that you go to the
Ritz-Carlton to await your Uncle if he be not upon the dock. I go to
the grain fields of Canada and then to the West of America.... I would
that it could be _au revoir_. Upon a day that shall come,
beautiful lady, perhaps it will be permitted to me to... _Non, vive
la France! A lies vite, cherie _... go while I--I--_Vive la
France_!"