She smiled again.

“Ah!” she said, “the gifts of the desert are two-fold, and what one gets depends on what one seeks.  For some the wilderness has gifts of resignation, meditation, peace; for others it has the horse, the tent, the pipe, the gun, the chase of the panther and antelope.  But to go back to yourself.  Life, you say, would be barren without ambition and love.  What is your ambition?”

“Nay, Madame, that is more than I can tell you—­more than I know myself.”

“Your profession....”

“If ever I dream dreams, Madame,” I interrupted quickly, “my profession has no share in them.  It is a profession I do not love, and which I hope some day to abandon.”

“Your dreams, then?”

I shook my head.

“Vague—­unsubstantial—­illusory—­forgotten as soon as dreamt!  How can I analyze them?  How can I describe them?  In childhood one says—­’I should like to be a soldier, and conquer the world;’ or ’I should like to be a sailor, and discover new Continents;’ or ’I should like to be a poet, and wear a laurel wreath, like Petrarch and Dante;’ but as one gets older and wiser (conscious, perhaps, of certain latent energies, and weary of certain present difficulties and restraints), one can only wait, as best one may, and watch for the rising of that tide whose flood leads on to fortune.”

With this I rose to take my leave.  Madame de Courcelles smiled and put out her hand.

“Come often,” she said; “and come at the hours when I am at home.  I shall always be glad to see you.  Above all, remember my caution—­not a word to Captain Dalrymple, either now or at any other time.”

“Madame, you may rely upon me.  One thing I ask, however, as the reward of my discretion.”

“And that one thing?”

“Permission, Madame, to serve you in any capacity, however humble—­in any strait where a brother might interfere, or a faithful retainer lay down his life in your service.”

With a sweet earnestness that made my heart beat and my cheeks glow, she thanked and promised me.

“I shall look upon you henceforth,” she said, “as my knight sans peur et sans reproche.”

Heaven knows that not all the lessons of all the moralists that ever wrote or preached since the world began, could just then have done me half such good service as did those simple words.  They came at the moment when I most needed them—­when I had almost lost my taste for society, and was sliding day by day into habits of more confirmed idleness and Bohemianism.  They roused me.  They made a man of me.  They recalled me to higher aims, “purer manners, nobler laws.”  They clothed me, so to speak, in the toga virilis of a generous devotion.  They made me long to prove myself “sans peur,” to merit the “sans reproche." They marked an era in my life never to be forgotten or effaced.

Let it not be thought for one moment that I loved her—­or fancied I loved her.  No, not so far as one heart-beat would carry me; but I was proud to possess her confidence and her friendship.  Was she not Dalrymple’s wife, and had not he asked me to watch over and protect her?  Nay, had she not called me her knight and accepted my fealty?