ckening her footsteps
as though remembering something she must do. He stepped out into the
path and came to meet her. She heard his footsteps, saw him, and stood
still abruptly.

She did not make a sound, but a hand went to her bosom quickly, as
though to quiet her heart or to steady herself. He had broken suddenly
upon her intent thoughts, he had startled her as she had been
seldom startled, for all her childhood training had been towards
self-possession before surprise and danger.

"This is not your side of the Sagalac," she said with a half-smile,
regaining composure.

"That is in dispute," he answered gaily. "I want to belong to both sides
of the Sagalac, I want both sides to belong to each other so that either
side shall not be my side or your side, or--"

"Or Monsieur Felix Marchand's side," she interrupted meaningly.

"Oh, he's on the outside!" snapped the fighter, with a hardening mouth.

She did not reply at once, but put her hat on, and tied the ribbons
loosely under her chin, looking thoughtfully into the distance.

"Is that the Western slang for saying he belongs nowhere?" she asked.

"Nowhere here," he answered with a grim twist to the corner of his
mouth, his eyes half-closing with sulky meaning. "Won't you sit down?"
he added quickly, in a more sprightly tone, for he saw she was about to
move on. He motioned towards a log lying beside the path and kicked some
branches out of the way.

After slight hesitation she sat down, burying her shoes in the fallen
leaves.

"You don't like Felix Marchand?" she remarked presently.

"No. Do you?"

She met his eyes squarely--so squarely that his own rather lost their
courage, and he blinked more quickly than is needed with a healthy eye.
He had been audacious, but he had not surprised the garrison.

"I have no deep reason for liking or disliking him, and you have," she
answered firmly; yet her colour rose slightly, and he thought he had
never seen skin that looked so like velvet-creamy, pink velvet.

"You seemed to think differently at Carillon not long ago," he returned.

"That was an accident," she answered calmly. "He was drunk, and that is
for forgetting--always."

"Always! Have you seen many men drunk?" he asked quickly. He did not
mean to be quizzical, but his voice sounded so, and she detected it.

"Yes, many," she answered with a little ring of defiance in her
tone--"many, often."

"Where?" he queried recklessly.

"In Lebanon," she retort