“Why did you come into the service?” she went on, before he had a chance to answer her. “You were born in the Noblesse--bah! I know an aristocrat at a glance! Now many of those aristocrats come; shoals of them; but it is always for something. They all come for something; most of them have been ruined by the lionnes, a hundred million of francs gone in a quarter! Ah, bah! what blind bats the best of you are! They have gambled, or bet, or got into hot water, or fought too many duels or caused a court scandal, or something; all the aristocrats that come to Africa are ruined. What ruined you, M. l'Aristocrat?” “Aristocrat? I am none. I am a Corporal of the Chasseurs.” “Diable! I have known a Duke a Corporal! What ruined you?” “What ruins most men, I imagine--folly.” “Folly, sure enough!” retorted Cigarette, with scornful acquiescence. She had no patience with him. He danced so deliciously, he looked so superb, and he would give her nothing but these absent answers. “Wisdom don't bring men who look as you look into the ranks of the volunteers for Africa. Besides, you are too handsome to be a sage!” He laughed a little. “I never was one, that's certain. And you are too pretty to be a cynic.” “A what?” She did not know the word. “Is that a good cigar you have? Give me one. Do women smoke in your old country?” “Oh, yes--many of them.” “Where is it, then?” “I have no country--now.” “But the one you had?” “I have forgotten I ever had one.” “Did it treat you ill, then?” “Not at all.” “Had you anything you cared for in it?” “Well--yes.” “What was it? A woman?” “No--a horse.” He stooped his head a little as he said it, and traced more figures slowly in the sand. “Ah!” She drew a short, quick breath. She understood that; she would only have laughed at him had it been a woman; Cigarette was more veracious than complimentary in her estimate of her own sex. “There was a man in the Cuirassiers I knew,” she went on softly, “loved a horse like that;--he would have died for Cossack--but he was a terrible gambler, terrible. Not but what I like to play myself. Well, one day he played and played till he was mad, and everything was gone; and then in his rage he staked the only thing he had left. Staked and lost the horse! He never said a word; but he just slipped a pistol in his pocket, went to the stable, kissed Cossack once--twice--thrice--and shot himself through the heart.” “Poor fellow!” murmured the Chasseur d'Afrique, in his chestnut beard. Cigarette was watching him with all the keenness of her falcon eyes; “he had gambled away a good deal too,” she thought. “It is always the same old story with them.”