ry and most rare embarrassment. "You are looking at me and not
thinking of me! We will soon change that!"

Such an insult she had never been subjected to, from the first day when
she had danced for sweetmeats on the top of a great drum when she was
three years old, in the middle of a circular camp of Tirailleurs. It
sent fresh nerve into her little limbs. It made her eyes flash like
so much fire, it gave her a millionfold more grace, more abandon, more
heedlessness. She stamped her tiny, spurred foot petulantly.

"Quicker! Quicker!" she cried; and as the musician obeyed her, she
whirled, she spun, she bounded, she seemed to live in air, while her
soft curls blew off her brow, and her white teeth glanced, and her
cheeks glowed with a carmine glow, and the little gold aiglettes broke
across her chest with the beating of her heart that throbbed like a
bird's heart when it is wild with the first breath of Spring.

She had pitted herself against him; and she won--so far.

The vivacity, the impetuosity, the antelope elegance, the voluptuous
repose that now and then broke the ceaseless, sparkling movement of her
dancing, caught his eyes and fixed them on her; it was bewitching, and
it bewitched him for the moment; he watched her as in other days he had
watched the fantastic witcheries of eastern alme, and the ballet charms
of opera dancers.

This young Bohemian of the Barrack danced in the dusky glare and
the tavern fumes of the As de Pique to a set of soldiers in their
shirt-sleeves with their short, black pipes in their mouths, with as
matchless a grace as ever the first ballerinas of Europe danced before
sovereigns and dukes on the boards of Paris, Vienna, or London. It was
the eastern bamboula of the Harems, to which was added all the elastic
joyance, all the gay brilliancy of the blood of France.

Suddenly she lifted both her hands above her head.

It was the signal well known, the signal of permission to join in that
wild vertigo for which every one of her spectators was panting; their
pipes were flung away, their kepis tossed off their heads, the music
clashed louder and faster and more fiery with every sound; the chorus
of the Marseillaise des Bataillons thundered from a hundred voices--they
danced as only men can dance who serve under the French flag, and
live under the African sun. Two, only, still looked on--the Chasseur
d'Afrique, and a veteran of the 10th company, lamed for life at
Mazagran.

"Are you a s