Cecil had not forgotten it; neither had he forgotten the lesson that this fair aristocrate had read him in the morning.  He saluted his chief again, set the chessbox down upon the ledge of the marble balustrade, and stood silent, without once glancing at the fair and haughty face that was more brilliant still in the African starlight than it had been in the noon sun of the Chasseurs’ Chambree.  Courtesy was forbidden him as insult from a corporal to a nobly born beauty; he no more quarreled with the decree than with other inevitable consequences, inevitable degradations, that followed on his entrance as a private under the French flag.  He had been used to the impassable demarcations of Caste; he did not dispute them more now that he was without, than he had done when within, their magic pale.

The carvings were passed from hand to hand as the Marquis’ six or eight guests, listless willing to be amused in the warmth of the evening after their dinner, occupied themselves with the ivory chess armies, cut with a skill and a finish worthy a Roman studio.  Praise enough was awarded to the art, but none of them remembered the artist, who stood apart, grave, calm, with a certain serene dignity that could not be degraded because others chose to treat him as the station he filled gave them fit right to do.

Only one glanced at him with a touch of wondering pity, softening her pride; she who had rejected the gift of those mimic squadrons.

“You were surely a sculptor once?” she asked him with that graceful, distant kindness which she might have shown some Arab outcast.

“Never, madame.”

“Indeed!  Then who taught you such exquisite art?”

“It cannot claim to be called art, madame.”

She looked at him with an increased interest:  the accent of his voice told her that this man, whatever he might be now, had once been a gentleman.

“Oh, yes; it is perfect of its kind.  Who was your master in it?”

“A common teacher, madame—­Necessity.”

There was a very sweet gleam of compassion in the luster of her dark, dreaming eyes.

“Does necessity often teach so well?”

“In the ranks of our army, madame, I think it does—­often, indeed, much better.”

Chateauroy had stood by and heard, with as much impatience as he cared to show before guests whose rank was precious to the man who had still weakness enough to be ashamed that his father’s brave and famous life had first been cradled under the thatch roof of a little posting-house.

“Victor knows that neither he nor his men have any right to waste their time on such trash,” he said carelessly; “but the truth is they love the canteen so well that they will do anything to add enough to their pay to buy brandy.”

She whom he had called Mme. la Princesse looked with a doubting surprise at the sculptor of the white Arab King she held.

“That man does not carve for brandy,” she thought.