o of the hour to Hades.

"Fine manners!" echoed Cecil, with a smile. "My poor child, have you
been so buffeted about that you have never been treated with commonest
courtesy?"

"Whew!" cried the little lady, blowing a puff of smoke down on him.
"None of your pity for me! Buffeted about? Do you suppose anybody ever
did anything with me that I didn't choose? If you had as much power as
I have in the army, Chateauroy would not send for you to sell your toys
like a peddler. You are a slave! I am a sovereign!"

With which she tossed back her graceful, spirited head, as though the
gold band of her cap were the gold band of a diadem. She was very proud
of her station in the Army of Africa, and glorified her privileges with
all a child's vanity.

He listened, amused with her boastful supremacy; but the last words
touched him with a certain pang just in that moment. He felt like a
slave--a slave who must obey his tyrant, or go out and die like a dog.

"Well, yes," he said slowly; "I am a slave, I fear. I wish a Bedouin
flissa would cut my thralls in two."

He spoke jestingly, but there was a tinge of sadness in the words that
touched Cigarette's changeful temper to contrition, and filled her with
the same compassion and wonder at him that she had felt when the ivory
wreaths and crucifixes had lain in her hands. She knew she had been
ungenerous--a crime dark as night in the sight of the little chivalrous
soldier.

"Ah," she said softly and waywardly, winding her way aright with that
penetration and tact which, however unsexed in other things, Cigarette
had kept thoroughly feminine. "That was but an idle word of mine;
forgive it, and forget it. You are not a slave when you fight in the
fantasias. Morbleu! They say to see you kill a man is beautiful--so
workmanlike! And you would go out and be shot to-morrow, rather than
sell your honor, or stain it. Bah! while you know they should cut your
heart out rather than make you tell a lie, or betray a comrade, you are
no slave; you have the best freedom of all. Take a glass of champagne?
How you look! Oh, the demoiselles, with the silver necks, are not
barrack drink, of course; but I drink champagne always myself. This is
M. le Prince's. He knows I only take the best brands."

With which Cigarette, leaning down from her casement, whose sill was
about a foot above his head, tendered her peace-offering in a bottle;
three of which, packed in her knapsack, she had carried off from th