tupid? Don't you dance?" muttered the veteran Zephyr to his
silent companion.

The Chasseur turned and smiled a little.

"I prefer a bamboula whose music is the cannon, bon pere."

"Bravo! Yet she is pretty enough to tempt you?"

"Yes; too pretty to be unsexed by such a life."

His thoughts went to a woman he had loved well: a young Arab, with eyes
like the softness of dark waters, who had fallen to him once in a razzia
as his share of spoil, and for whom he had denied himself cards, or
wine, or tobacco, or an hour at the Cafe, or anything that alleviated
the privation and severity of his lot as "simple soldat," which he had
been then, that she might have such few and slender comforts as he could
give her from his miserable pay. She was dead. Her death had been the
darkest passage in his life in Africa--but the flute-like music of her
voice seemed to come on his ear now. This girl-soldier had little charm
for him after the sweet, silent, tender grace of his lost Zelme.

He turned and touched on the shoulder a Chasseur who had paused a moment
to get breath in the headlong whirl:

"Come, we are to be with the Djied by dawn!"

The trooper obeyed instantly; they were ordered to visit and remain
with a Bedouin camp some thirty miles away on the naked plateau; a camp
professedly submissive, but not so much so but that the Bureau deemed
it well to profit themselves by the services of the corporal, whose
knowledge of Arabic, whose friendship with the tribes, and whose
superior intelligence in all such missions rendered him peculiarly
fitted for errands that required diplomacy and address as well as daring
and fire.

He went thoughtfully out of the noisy, reeking ballroom into the warm
luster of the Algerian night; as he went, Cigarette, who had been nearer
than he knew, flashed full in his eyes the fury of her own sparkling
ones, while, with a contemptuous laugh, she struck him on the lips with
the cigar she hurled at him.

"Unsexed? Pouf! If you have a woman's face, may I not have a man's soul?
It is only a fair exchange. I am no kitten, bon zig; take care of my
talons!"

The words were spoken with the fierceness of Africa; she had too much
in her of the spirit of the Zephyrs and the Chacals, with whom her youth
had been spent from her cradle up, not to be dangerous when roused; she
was off at a bound, and in the midst of the mad whirl again before he
could attempt to soften or efface the words she had overheard,