“Where should one learn courtesies, if not in France?” he answered wearily. He had danced with this girl-soldier the night before at a guinguette ball, seeing her for the first time, for it was almost the first time he had been in the city since the night when he had thrown the dice, and lost ten Napoleons and the Bedouins to Claude de Chanrellon; but his thoughts were far from her in this moment. “Ouf! You have learnt carte and tierce with your tongue!” cried Cigarette, provoked to receive no more compliment than that. From generals and staff officers, as from drummers and trumpeters, she was accustomed to flattery and wooing, luscious as sugared chocolate, and ardent as flirtation, with a barrack flavor about it, commonly is; she would, as often as not, to be sure, finish it with the butt-end of her pistol, or the butt-end of some bit of stinging sarcasm, but still, for all that, she liked it, and resented its omission. “They say you are English, but I don't believe it; you speak too soft, and you sound the double L's too well. A Spaniard?” “Do you find me so devout a Catholic that you think so?” She laughed. “A Greek, then?” “Still worse. Have you seen me cheat at cards?” “An Austrian? You waltz like a White Coat!” He shook his head. She stamped her little foot into the ground--a foot fit for a model, with its shapely military boot; spurred, too, for Cigarette rode like a circus-rider. “Say what you are, then, at once.” “A soldier of France. Can you wish me more?” For the first time her eyes flashed and softened--her one love was the tricolor. “True!” she said simply. “But you were not always a soldier of France? You joined, they say, twelve years ago. What were you before then?” She here cast herself down in front of him, and, with her elbows on the sand, and her chin on her hands, watched him with all the frank curiosity and unmoved nonchalance imaginable, as she launched the question point-blank. “Before!” he said slowly. “Well--a fool.” “You belonged in the majority, then!” said Cigarette, with a piquance made a thousand times more piquant by the camp slang she spoke in. “You should not have had to come into the ranks, mon ami; majorities--specially that majority--have very smooth sailing generally!” He looked at her more closely, though she wearied him. “Where have you got your ironies, Cigarette? You are so young.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Bah! one is never young, and always young in camps. Young? Pardieu! When I was four I could swear like a grenadier, plunder like a prefet, lie like a priest, and drink like a bohemian.” Yet--with all that--and it was the truth, the brow was so open under the close rings of the curls, the skin so clear under the sun-tan, the mouth so rich and so arch in its youth!