“To the destiny of those born of American and French blood commingled!”

All those present arose to their feet and drank that toast with loving looking at me, and I did not know what I should do until that good old gray boat capitaine patted me upon the shoulder and said across his empty glass: 

“God bless and keep you, child!”

“I thank everybody,” I answered as I went into the embrace of my very large lady friend from the State of Cincinnati, and then into the embrace of the other ladies.

“I’ve been knitting all day for two months but I’m going to begin to sit up at night,” sobbed the lady from a queer Keokuk name as I took her into my embrace on account of her extreme smallness.

It was at a very late hour, just before retiring, that I ascended to the deck with my Capitaine to view the effect of a very young moon on the waves of the ocean.

“Is it that you think now your soldier of France has done your command well, mon Capitaine?” I asked of him.

“Most extremely well, and entirely in the mode of a woman.  Those two young men have made of themselves very noble competitors for your favor, but remember that it is of a truth that only a ‘daredevil’ would bring together such high explosives.  I salute you!” he made answer to me with a laugh which ended in a sigh.  “Child, little child,” he continued as he bent over my hand to kiss it as he did each night before he conducted me to the head of the stairs leading down into my cabin, “above all take unto yourself all that is possible of joy in the present, for we do not know what the supply will be for the future.  Perhaps it will be like the harvests of France—­burned up in a world-conflagration.”

“Ah, but, mon Capitaine, will you not dance with me once to-night for a joy.  It will be our last on the ship before we land to-morrow.  You have never danced with me and to-morrow you are lost from me into the wilds of that English Canada.”  And as I spoke I held out my arms to him and began to hum the music of that remarkable Chin-Chin fox dance that I had been dancing below with Mr. William Raines and which the band had just begun to play again.  Of course, I knew that I must be very lovely in that young moonlight in one of the frocks that Nannette had purchased from her very talented cousin, the couturiere on Rue Leopold, and I could see no reason why I should not make a happiness for the great gentleman of France as well as the young boy from Philadelphia and also the one from Saint Louis.

“You are a daredevil, Mademoiselle, to propose the dance to powder-stained Armond Lasselles, but the joy of you is of a greatness and I feel from it a healing in the night of my soul.”

And he reached out in the moonlight and took me into his arms and danced me along that deck with a grace that it would not be possible for either the one from Philadelphia or the one from Saint Louis to imitate.  That nice but very ponderous lady from the State of Cincinnati who regarded us from her steamer chair, enjoyed it as much as did I, and she clapped her large hands as Monsieur le Capitaine swung me around into the quietness beyond one of the tall chimneys for smoke from the engine.