“Is that soldier asleep?”

“He is, madame,” softly answered the old man, in his slow, studied French.  “He comes here to rest sometimes out of the noise; he was very tired to-day, and I think ill, would he have confessed it.”

“Indeed!” Her eyes fell on him with compassion; he had fallen into an attitude of much grace and of utter exhaustion; his head was uncovered and rested on one arm, so that the face was turned upward.  With a woman’s rapid, comprehensive glance, she saw that dark shadow, like a bruise, under his closed, aching eyes; she saw the weary pain upon his forehead; she saw the whiteness of his hands, the slenderness of his wrists, the softness of his hair; she saw, as she had seen before, that whatever he might be now, in some past time he had been a man of gentle blood, of courtly bearing.

“He is a Chasseur d’Afrique?” she asked the Moslem.

“Yes, madame.  I think—­he must have been something very different some day.”

She did not answer; she stood with her thoughtful eyes gazing on the worn-out soldier.

“He saved me once, madame, at much risk to himself, from the savagery of some Turcos,” the old man went on.  “Of course, he is always welcome under my roof.  The companionship he has must be bitter to him, I fancy; they do say he would have had his officer’s grade, and the cross, too, long before now, if it were not for his Colonel’s hatred.”

“Ah!  I have seen him before now; he carves in ivory.  I suppose he has a good side for those things with you?”

The Moor looked up in amazement.

“In ivory, madame?—­he?  Allah—­il-Allah!  I never heard of it.  It is
strange-----”

“Very strange.  Doubtless you would have given him a good price for them?”

“Surely I would; any price he should have wished.  Do I not owe him my life?”

At that moment little Musjid let fall a valuable coffee-tray, inlaid with amber; his master, with muttered apology, hastened to the scene of the accident; the noise startled Cecil, and his eyes unclosed to all the dreamy, fantastic colors of the place, and met those bent on him in musing pity—­saw that lustrous, haughty, delicate head bending slightly down through the many-colored shadows.

He thought he was dreaming, yet on instinct he rose, staggering slightly, for sharp pain was still darting through his head and temples.

“Madame!  Pardon me!  Was I sleeping?”

“You were, and rest again.  You look ill,” she said gently, and there was, for a moment, less of that accent in her voice, which the night before had marked so distinctly, so pointedly, the line of demarcation between a Princess of Spain and a soldier of Africa.

“I thank you; I ail nothing.”

He had no sense that he did, in the presence of that face which had the beauty of his old life; under the charm of that voice which had the music of his buried years.