. "And you, my friend?" she asked gently.

"No one lives who will grieve for me," he replied sadly.

"You are young, my friend, and your heart will--recover itself. I am
old, made old by illness and sorrow." She was a picture of glowing
health! "May I ask the name by which I may remember you?"

He was clean bowled, for he, foolishly, had not prepared a plausible
name. "I am called," stammered he, "Captain Rouille." It was the best
that he could do on the instant--the translation of his uncommon
English name into French.

"A strange name," she murmured, "though the sound of it is beautiful.
Rouille! It signifies, for the moment, the decay of hopes, a mould of
rust obscuring ambition. But in a little while the steel of your
courage will shine bright once more. I am Madame Gilbert; my husband
was of the Territorial Army--a Captain also." She had thought to have
made him a Colonel on General Castelnau's staff, but refrained from so
risky a flight of imagination. An obscure Captain of Territorials
might well be called Guilbert, and pass unidentified.

As they pressed hands at parting, Rust hesitated. "May one hope,
madame, to meet you again. Your kindness has been great, and I feel
that I have made a new friend."

"And I also," sighed Madame. "I often come here to drink the English
tea. It is a pleasing custom of London."

"To-morrow?" he inquired anxiously. "It is possible," replied Madame,
very graciously.

* * * * *

"Well," said I, when Madame had told me of this meeting, "I hope that
you had the grace to feel ashamed of yourself. To deceive an invalided
flying officer with your tale of the Captain of Territorials, blown up
by a shell beside his general upon Le Grand Couronne. It was
abominable."

"It was the unknown grave which fetched him," said Madame cheerfully.

"Worse and worse. Why could you not have told him the truth?"

"Because, my stupid friend, the Captain Rouille interested me, and I
was on duty. What was a captain in the French Flying Corps doing with
an aeroplane driven by a 90 h.p. Royal Aircraft Factory engine
(R.A.F.)? Why should he speak of 'our' destroyers, referring to those
of the British, when he ought to have said the 'English' destroyers as
a French officer would have done? Why again should he hesitate over
his name, and then give so impossible a one as Rouille? No, I had
discerned plainly that M. le Capitaine Rouille, whatever he might be,
was not th