't it? As if we
were intended to do something for each other in future. I wish I _could_
do something for you, to pay you for to-night."

"I don't need pay." Max smiled again, almost happily. "It's you who are
being good to me. I was feeling horribly down on my luck."

"I'm sorry. But it's helped you to help me. I understand that. Do you
know, I believe you are one whose greatest pleasure is in doing things
for those not as strong as yourself."

"I never noticed that in my character," laughed Max.

"Yet there's something which tells me I'm right. I think you would, for
that reason, make a good soldier. My father is a soldier. He's stationed
at a place called Sidi-bel-Abbes."

"But that's where the Foreign Legion is, isn't it?" The words slipped
out.

"He's colonel of the First Regiment. Oh, I believe it's half dread of
what he'll say to me, that makes me so ill and nervous to-night. The
only two men in the world I love are so strong, so--so almost terrible,
that I'm like a little wreath of spray dashed against the rocks of their
nature. They don't even know I'm there!"

Suddenly Max seemed to see the two framed photographs in the open bag:
an officer in French uniform, and Richard Stanton, the explorer, the man
of fire and steel said to be without mercy for himself or others. Max
felt ashamed, as if inadvertently he had stumbled upon a secret. "Strong
men should be the tenderest to women," he reminded her.

"Yes, on principle. But when they want to live their own lives, and
women interfere? What then? Could one expect them to be kind and
gentle?"

"A man worth his salt couldn't be harsh to a woman he loved."

"But if he didn't love her? I'm thinking of two men I know. And just
now, more of my father than--than the other. I've got no one to advise
me. I wonder if you would, a little? You're a man, and--and I can't
help wondering if you're not a soldier. Don't think I ask from
curiosity. And don't tell me if you'd rather not. But you see, if you
_are_ one, it would help, because you could understand better how a
soldier would feel about things."

"I have been a soldier," Max said. There was no reason why he should
keep back the truth from this little girl for whom he was playing
watchdog: the little girl who thought him as kind as a brother! "But I'm
afraid I don't know much about women."

"The soldier I'm thinking about--my father--doesn't want to have
anything to do with women. My mother spoiled him for o