“I distinctly prefer it, as one that knows how to make fine soldiers and how to reward them; as one in which a brave man will be valued, and a worn-out veteran will not be left to die like a horse at a knacker’s.”

“A brave man valued, and yet you are a corporal!” thought Milady, as he pursued: 

“Since I am here, madame, let me thank you, in the Army’s name, for your infinite goodness in acting so munificently on my slight hint.  Your generosity has made many happy hearts in the hospital.”

“Generosity!  Oh, do not call it by any such name!  What did it cost me?  We are terribly selfish here.  I am indebted to you that for once you made me remember those who suffered.”

She spoke with a certain impulse of candor and of self-accusation that broke with great sweetness the somewhat coldness of her general manner; it was like a gleam of light that showed all the depth and the warmth that in truth lay beneath that imperious languor of habit.  It broke further the ice of distance that severed the grande dame from the cavalry soldier.

Insensibly to himself, the knowledge that he had, in fact, the right to stand before her as an equal gave him the bearing of one who exercised that right, and her rapid perception had felt before now that this Roumi of Africa was as true a gentleman as any that had ever thronged about her in palaces.  Her own life had been an uninterrupted course of luxury, prosperity, serenity, and power; the adversity which she could not but perceive had weighed on his had a strange interest to her.  She had heard of many calamities, and aided many; but they had always been far sundered from her, they had never touched her; in this man’s presence they seemed to grow very close, terribly real.  She led him on to speak of his comrades, of his daily life, of his harassing routine of duties in peace, and of his various experiences in war.  He told her, too, of Leon Ramon’s history; and as she listened, he saw a mist arise and dim the brilliancy of those eyes that men complained would never soften.  The very fidelity with which he sketched to her the bitter sufferings and the rough nobility that were momentarily borne and seen in that great military family of which he had become a son by adoption, interested her by its very unlikeness to anything in her own world.

His voice had still the old sweetness, his manner still its old grace; and added to these were a grave earnestness and a natural eloquence that the darkness of his own fortunes, and the sympathies with others that pain had awakened, had brought to him.  He wholly forgot their respective stations; he only remembered that for the first time for so many years he had the charm of converse with a woman of high breeding, of inexpressible beauty, and of keen and delicate intuition.  He wholly forgot how time passed, and she did not seek to remind him; indeed, she but little noted it herself.

At last the conversation turned back to his Chief.