"But, marraine, I might as well make love to a sister of charity."
"There was la Belle Heloise, and no woman is immune."
"I think she is engaged to some American cowboy who will come and claim her, marraine."
His godmother was offended.
"Rubbish!" she said. "She is engaged to no one, Bob. She is an idealist, a Rosalind; but that will not prevent her from making an excellent wife."
"She is certainly very beautiful," said the Duc de Tremont, and he told Julia so.
"You are very beautiful," said the Duc de Tremont to Miss Redmond, as she leaned on the balcony of the villa. The bougainvillea leaned against her breast. "When you stood in the hospital under the window and sang to the poor devils, you looked like an angel."
"Poor things!" said Julia Redmond. "Do you think that they liked it?"
"Liked it!" exclaimed the young man enthusiastically, "couldn't you see by their faces? One poor devil said to me: 'One can die better now, Monsieur.' There was no hope for him, it seems."
Tremont and the Marquise d'Esclignac had docilely gone with Julia Redmond every day at a certain hour to the different hospitals, where Julia, after rendering some slight services to the nurses—for she was not needed—sang for the sick, standing in the outer hallway of the building open on every side. She knew that Sabron was not among these sick. Where he was or what sounds his ears might hear, she could not know; but she sang for him, and the fact put a sweetness in her voice that touched the ears of the suffering and uplifted those who were not too far down to be uplifted, and as for the dying, it helped them, as the soldier said, to die.