"What are you doing here, child?" she cried.
"I am listening."
"You are no longer afraid?"
"We are to attack," the girl said proudly, and her eyes snapped with defiant ardor.
"Bravo, little one!" laughed Nicole. "Sit with us, then."
She turned to Louison in explanation.
"She is my protégée who is coming to me for lessons."
Louison nodded without surprise and turned her slow, restrained gaze on the room, while the eyes of Nicole, full of enthusiasm, leaped from group to group in rapid, eager scrutiny, resting finally on a knot of Marseillais near by. One man dominated these uncouth, bristling, living arsenals—a squat figure, sprawling under the grotesque shadows of the lamp, which further distorted his huge bulk and bullet head. One ungainly, crooked hand leaned in ponderous support upon the table; the other was flourished above him in frantic gestures, magnetic, absurd, comic, and terrible, as he harangued his comrades, who acclaimed his exhortations with shouts that burst above the ceaseless roar of the room.
"They are not very coquette," Nicole said critically, "and not very clean."
"Ah, but think how they have marched, all the way from Marseilles!" Geneviève cried, in protest.