--a gentleman."

He bowed low before her.

"Madame, you have made me the debtor of my enemy's outrage. Those words
from you are more than sufficient compensation for it."

"A poor one, I fear! Your Colonel is your enemy, then? And wherefore?"

He paused a moment.

"Why, at first, I scarcely know. We are antagonistic, I suppose."

"But is it usual for officers of his high grade to show such malice to
their soldiers?"

"Most unusual. In this service especially so; although officers rising
from the ranks themselves are more apt to contract prejudices and ill
feeling against, as they are to feel favoritism to, their men, than
where they enter the regiment in a superior grade at once. At least,
that is the opinion I myself have formed; studying the working of the
different systems."

"You know the English service, then?"

"I know something of it."

"And still, though thinking this, you prefer the French?"

"I distinctly prefer it, as one that knows how to make fine soldiers and
how to reward them; as one in which a brave man will be valued, and a
worn-out veteran will not be left to die like a horse at a knacker's."

"A brave man valued, and yet you are a corporal!" thought Milady, as he
pursued:

"Since I am here, madame, let me thank you, in the Army's name, for
your infinite goodness in acting so munificently on my slight hint. Your
generosity has made many happy hearts in the hospital."

"Generosity! Oh, do not call it by any such name! What did it cost me?
We are terribly selfish here. I am indebted to you that for once you
made me remember those who suffered."

She spoke with a certain impulse of candor and of self-accusation that
broke with great sweetness the somewhat coldness of her general manner;
it was like a gleam of light that showed all the depth and the warmth
that in truth lay beneath that imperious languor of habit. It broke
further the ice of distance that severed the grande dame from the
cavalry soldier.

Insensibly to himself, the knowledge that he had, in fact, the right to
stand before her as an equal gave him the bearing of one who exercised
that right, and her rapid perception had felt before now that this Roumi
of Africa was as true a gentleman as any that had ever thronged about
her in palaces. Her own life had been an uninterrupted course of luxury,
prosperity, serenity, and power; the adversity which she could not but
perceive had weighed on his had a strange interest to her.