She laughed. “A Greek, then?”
“Still worse. Have you seen me cheat at cards?”
“An Austrian? You waltz like a White Coat!”
He shook his head.
She stamped her little foot into the ground—a foot fit for a model, with its shapely military boot; spurred, too, for Cigarette rode like a circus-rider.
“Say what you are, then, at once.”
“A soldier of France. Can you wish me more?”
For the first time her eyes flashed and softened—her one love was the tricolor.
“True!” she said simply. “But you were not always a soldier of France? You joined, they say, twelve years ago. What were you before then?”
She here cast herself down in front of him, and, with her elbows on the sand, and her chin on her hands, watched him with all the frank curiosity and unmoved nonchalance imaginable, as she launched the question point-blank.