"I don't need pay." Max smiled again, almost happily. "It's you who are being good to me. I was feeling horribly down on my luck."
"I'm sorry. But it's helped you to help me. I understand that. Do you know, I believe you are one whose greatest pleasure is in doing things for those not as strong as yourself."
"I never noticed that in my character," laughed Max.
"Yet there's something which tells me I'm right. I think you would, for that reason, make a good soldier. My father is a soldier. He's stationed at a place called Sidi-bel-Abbés."
"But that's where the Foreign Legion is, isn't it?" The words slipped out.
"He's colonel of the First Regiment. Oh, I believe it's half dread of what he'll say to me, that makes me so ill and nervous to-night. The only two men in the world I love are so strong, so—so almost terrible, that I'm like a little wreath of spray dashed against the rocks of their nature. They don't even know I'm there!"
Suddenly Max seemed to see the two framed photographs in the open bag: an officer in French uniform, and Richard Stanton, the explorer, the man of fire and steel said to be without mercy for himself or others. Max felt ashamed, as if inadvertently he had stumbled upon a secret. "Strong men should be the tenderest to women," he reminded her.
"Yes, on principle. But when they want to live their own lives, and women interfere? What then? Could one expect them to be kind and gentle?"
"A man worth his salt couldn't be harsh to a woman he loved."
"But if he didn't love her? I'm thinking of two men I know. And just now, more of my father than—than the other. I've got no one to advise me. I wonder if you would, a little? You're a man, and—and I can't help wondering if you're not a soldier. Don't think I ask from curiosity. And don't tell me if you'd rather not. But you see, if you are one, it would help, because you could understand better how a soldier would feel about things."