She repeated her question imperiously, as Cecil kept silent. “You will go to-night?” He shrugged his shoulders. He did not care to discuss his Colonel's orders with this pretty little Bacchante. “Oh, a chief's command, you know--” “Ah, a fig for a chief!” retorted Cigarette impatiently. “Why don't you say the truth? You are thinking you will disobey, and risk the rest!” “Well, why not? I grant his right in barrack and field, but----” He spoke rather to himself than her, and his thoughts, as he spoke, went back to the scene of the morning. He felt, with a romantic impulse that he smiled at, even as it passed over him, that he would rather have half a dozen muskets fired at him in the death-sentence of a mutineer than meet again the glance of those proud, azure eyes, sweeping over him in their calm indifference to a private of Chasseurs, their calm ignorance that he could be wounded or be stung. “But?” echoed Cigarette, leaning out of her oval hole, perched in the quaint, gray Moresco wall, parti-colored with broken encaustics of varied hues. “Chut, bon comrade! That little word has been the undoing of the world ever since the world began. 'But' is a blank cartridge, and never did anything but miss fire yet. Shoot dead, or don't aim at all, whichever you like; but never make a false stroke with 'but'! So you won't obey Chateauroy in this?” He was silent again. He would not answer falsely, and he did not care to say his thoughts to her. “'No,'” pursued Cigarette, translating his silence at her fancy, “you say to yourself, 'I am an aristocrat--I will not be ordered in this thing'--you say, 'I am a good soldier; I will not be sent for like a hawker'--you say, 'I was noble once: I will show my blood at last, if I die!' Ah!--you say that!” He laughed a little as he looked up at her. “Not exactly that, but something as foolish, perhaps. Are you a witch, my pretty one?” “Whoever doubted it, except you?”