He took the finger thus heroically proffered, hesitated a second, then put it softly to his lips.  “I would trust you with my life,” he said, “with my honour, with all that I possess.  Christine, I am an inventor, and I am at the edge of a great discovery—­a discovery that will make the French artillery the greatest in the world.”

“Goodness!” said Chris, with a gasp; then in haste, “Not—­not greater than ours surely!”

He turned to her impetuously in the darkness, her hands caught into his.  “Ah, you say that because you are English!  And the English—­il faut que les anglais soient toujours, toujours les premiers—­is it not so—­always and in all things?  Yet consider!  What is it—­this national rivalry—­this strife for the supremacy?  We laugh at it, you and I. We know what it is worth.”

But Chris was too young to laugh.  “I don’t quite like it,” she said.  “I’m very sorry.  Shall we talk of something else?”

But he still held her hands closely clasped.  “Listen, Christine, my little one!  These things they pass.  They are as a dream in the midst of a great Reality.  They are not the materials of which we weave our life.  Envy, ambition, success—­what are they?  Only a procession that marches under the windows, and we look out above them, you and I, to the great heaven and the sun; and”—­something more than eagerness thrilled suddenly in his voice—­“we know that that is our life—­the Spark Eternal that nothing can ever quench.”

He ceased abruptly.  Cinders had stirred in his sleep, and she had drawn away one of her hands to fondle him.

There fell short silence.  Then, her voice a little doubtful, she spoke—­

“You are not ambitious, then?”

He threw himself back against the rock, and with the movement a certain tension went out of the atmosphere—­a tension of which she had been vaguely aware almost without knowing it.

“Ah, yes, I am ambitious,” he said.  “I am a builder.  I have my work to do.  And I shall succeed.  I shall make that which all the world will envy.  I shall be famous.”  He broke off to laugh exultantly.  “Oh, it will be good—­good!” he said.  “One does not often reach the summit while one is yet young.  There are times when it seems too wonderful to be true; and yet I know—­I know!”

“Is it a gun?” said Chris.

“Yes, mignonne, a gun!  It is also a secret—­thine and mine.”

She uttered a faint sigh.  “I wish it wasn’t a gun, Bertie.  If it were only an aeroplane, or something that didn’t hurt anyone!  Of course, you are a soldier and a Frenchman.  I couldn’t expect you to understand.”

He laughed rather ruefully.  “But I understand all.  And you do not love the French?  No?”

“Not so very much,” said Chris honestly.  “Of course, I’m not being personal.  I liked you from the first.”

“Ah!  But really?” he said.

“Yes, really; and so did Cinders.  He always knows when people are nice.  We shall miss you quite a lot when we go home.”