“I fear that is scarcely true!” she answered him.  “You look in pain; though as a soldier, perhaps, you will not own it?”

“A headache from the sun—­no more, madame.”

He was careful not again to forget the social gulf which yawned between them.

“That is quite bad enough!  Your service must be severe?”

“In Africa, Milady, one cannot expect indulgence.”

“I suppose not.  You have served long?”

“Twelve years, madame.”

“And your name?”

“Louis Victor.”  She fancied there was a slight abruptness in the reply, as though he were about to add some other name, and checked himself.

She entered it in the little book from which she had taken her banknotes.

“I may be able to serve you,” she said, as she wrote.  “I will speak of you to the Marshal; and when I return to Paris, I may have an opportunity to bring your name before the Emperor.  He is as rapid as his uncle to reward military merit; but he has not his uncle’s opportunities for personal observation of his soldiers.”

The color flushed his forehead.

“You do me much honor,” he said rapidly, “but if you would gratify me, madame, do not seek to do anything of the kind.”

“And why?  Do you not even desire the cross?”

“I desire nothing, except to be forgotten.”

“You seek what others dread then?”

“It may be so.  At any rate, if you would serve me, madame, never say what can bring me into notice.”

She regarded him with much surprise, with some slight sense of annoyance; she had bent far in tendering her influence at the French court to a private soldier, and his rejection of it seemed as ungracious as it was inexplicable.

At that moment the Moor joined them.

“Milady has told me, M. Victor, that you are a first-rate carver of ivories.  How is it that you have never let me benefit by your art?”

“My things are not worth a sou,” muttered Cecil hurriedly.

“You do them great injustice, and yourself also,” said the grande dame, more coldly than she had before spoken.  “Your carvings are singularly perfect, and should bring you considerable returns.”

“Why have you never shown them to me at least?” pursued Ben Arsli—­“why not have given me my option?”

The blood flushed Cecil’s face again; he turned to the Princess.

“I withheld them, madame, not because he would have underpriced, but overpriced them.  He rates a trifling act of mine, of long ago, so unduly.”

She bent her head in silence; yet a more graceful comprehension of his motive she could not have given than her glance alone gave.

Ben Arsli stroked his great beard; more moved than his Moslem dignity would show.

“Always so!” he muttered, “always so!  My son, in some life before this, was not generosity your ruin?”

“Milady was about to purchase the lamp?” asked Cecil, avoiding the question.  “Her Highness will not find anything like it in all Algiers.”