ve-looking young man. There was an appeal in his dark
eyes as they met hers; he was imploring her of her gracious kindness
to permit him to occupy one of her superfluous seats, and she
telegraphed to him an encouraging reply. The French officer
approached, saluted, and bowed: "Is it permitted, madame, to
inconvenience you?" he asked humbly. "The tables are very full, or I
would not venture to intrude." He spoke in careful, accurate English,
and with an accent markedly French.

"Please favour me by sitting down at once," replied Madame. "I feel
myself to be very selfish with my four places and one small person."
She spoke in careful, accurate English, and with an accent markedly
French.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, seating himself opposite to her, and breaking into
French. "Madame is of my country, is it not so?"

"But certainly," said Madame in the same language, which was to her a
second mother-tongue. "I am of Paris. If you had not been French I
should not have dared to hint to you that a place at this table might
be taken."

For a few minutes they talked together in the ceremonious style for
which the French language is the perfect medium, and then dropped into
more easy friendly speech. Madame, when she likes the look of a man,
becomes intimate at the shortest notice, and Rust, like every man born
of woman, succumbed helplessly, instantly, to the wiles of Madame.
Though she had finished tea, she urged Rust not to be hurried; there
was plenty of time, and one did not often have the happiness to meet a
French officer in this dreary London. She enveloped him in her meshes
of kindliness, and he responded by thinking to himself that she was
the loveliest, most friendly creature whom he had ever met. Madame
knows a great deal more of military details than most male civilians,
but when she talked to Captain Rust at the Savoy, her ignorance of the
Flying Corps was absolute. She asked questions, quite intelligent
questions, and he bubbled over with eagerness to answer them. Poor
Rust; I can picture the humbling scene. He made an ass of himself, of
course, but not a greater ass than I always make of myself--and I am
not far from double his age--whenever Madame gets to work upon me.

Within ten minutes she had wheedled out of him an account of his
accident. "I was out on patrol duty," he explained, "spotting for
submarines between the Straits and Zeebrugge. When the weather is fine
we can see deep down into the water, a hundred