“Ah, hush! when I think of what her love was, how worthless looks my own! How little worthy of the fate it finds! What have I done that every joy should become mine, when she——”
Her mouth trembled, and the phrase died unfinished; strong as her love had grown, it looked to her unproven and without desert, beside that which had chose to perish for his sake. And where they stood with the future as fair before them as the light of the day around them, he bowed his head, as before some sacred thing, at the whisper of the child who had died for him. The memories of both went back to a place in a desert land where the folds of the Tricolor drooped over one little grave turned westward toward the shores of France—a grave made where the beat of drum, and the sound of moving squadrons, and the ring of the trumpet-call, and the noise of the assembling battalions could be heard by night and day; a grave where the troops, as they passed it by, saluted and lowered their arms in tender reverence, in faithful, unasked homage, because beneath the Flag they honored there was carved in the white stone one name that spoke to every heart within the army she had loved, one name on which the Arab sun streamed as with a martyr's glory:
“CIGARETTE, “ENFANT DE L'ARMEE, SOLDAT DE LA FRANCE.”