She frowned a little.
"You seem to have the European notion that all Americans are dollar chasers!"
He shrugged his shoulders slightly. His harshly lined face was very strong; one sensed that its harshness had come from the outside—from hunger, from hardship and privations, from suffering strongly borne. He had not gone through the war unscathed, this young man who had tossed away a princely "de" in order to become plain Henry Gramont, American citizen.
"In a sense, yes; why not?" he answered. "I am an American. I am a dollar chaser, and not ashamed of it. I am going into business here. Once it is a success, I shall go on; I shall see America, I shall come to know this whole country of mine, all of it! I have been a month in New Orleans—do you know, a strange thing happened to me only a few days after I arrived here!"
With her eyes she urged him on, and he continued gravely:
"In France I met a man, an American sergeant named Hammond. It was just at the close of things. We had adjoining cots at Nice——"
"Ah!" she exclaimed, quickly. "I remember, you wrote about him—the man who had been wounded in both legs! Did he get well? You never said."
"I never knew until I came here," answered Gramont. "One night, not long after I had got established in my pension on Burgundy Street, a man tried to rob me. It was this same man, Hammond; we recognized each other almost at once.
"I took him home with me and learned his story. He had come back to America only to find his wife dead from influenza, his home broken up, his future destroyed. He drifted to New Orleans, careless of what happened to him. He flung himself desperately into a career of burglary and pillage. Well, I gave Hammond a job; he is my chauffeur. You would never recognize him as the same man now! I am very proud of his friendship."
"That was well said." Lucie nodded her head quickly. "I shan't call you M. Le prince any more—unless you offend again."