“You have vexed her, Victor,” said Leon Ramon, as she was lost to sight through the doors of the great, desolate chamber.

“I hope not; I do not know how,” answered Cecil.  “It is impossible to follow the windings of her wayward caprices.  A child—­a soldier—­a dancer—­a brigand—­a spoiled beauty—­a mischievous gamin—­how is one to treat such a little fagot of opposites?”

The others smiled.

“Ah! you do not know the Little One yet.  She is worth a study.  I painted her years ago—­’La Vivandiere a Sept Ans.’  There was not a picture in the Salon that winter that was sought like it.  I had traveled in Algeria then; I had not entered the army.  The first thing I saw of Cigarette was this:  She was seven years old; she had been beaten black and blue; she had had two of her tiny teeth knocked out.  The men were furious—­she was a pet with them; and she would not say who had done it, though she knew twenty swords would have beaten him flat as a fritter if she had given his name.  I got her to sit to me some days after.  I pleased her with her own picture.  I asked her to tell me why she would not say who had ill-treated her.  She put her head on one side like a robin, and told me, in a whisper:  ’It was one of my comrades—­because I would not steal for him.  I would not have the army know—­it would demoralize them.  If a French soldier ever does a cowardly thing, another French soldier must not betray it.’  That was Cigarette—­at seven years.  The esprit de corps was stronger than her own wrongs.  What do you say to that nature?”

“That is superb!—­that it might be molded to anything.  The pity is—­”

“Ah,” said the artist-trooper, half wearily, half laughingly.  “Spare me the old world-worn, threadbare formulas.  Because the flax and the laleza blossom for use, and the garden flowers grow trained and pruned, must there be no bud that opens for mere love of the sun, and swings free in the wind in its fearless, fair fashion?  Believe me, dear Victor, it is the lives which follow no previous rule that do the most good and give the most harvest.”

“Surely.  Only for this child—­a woman—­in her future—­”

“Her future!  Well, she will die, I dare say, some bright day or another, at the head of a regiment; with some desperate battle turned by the valor of her charge, and the sight of the torn tricolor upheld in her little hands.  That is what Cigarette hopes for—­why not?  There will always be a million of commonplace women ready to keep up the decorous traditions of their sex, and sit in safety over their needles by the side of their hearths.  One little lioness here and there in a generation cannot do overmuch harm.”