She glanced at his hands, which were very white, despite the sun of Algiers and the labors that fall to a private of Chasseurs.
"Beau lion!" she thought, "and noble, whatever he is." But the best of blood was not new to her in the ranks of the Algerian regiments; she had known so many of them--those gilded butterflies of the Chaussee d'Antin, those lordly spendthrifts of the vieille roche, who had served in the battalions of the demi-cavalry, or the squadrons of the French Horse, to be thrust, nameless and unhonored, into a sand-hole hastily dug with bayonets in the hot hush of an African night.
She woke him unceremoniously from his reverie, with a challenge to wine.
"Ah, ha! Tata Leroux says you are English; by the faith, he must be right, or you would never sit musing there like an owl in the sunlight! Take a draught of my burgundy; bright as rubies.

I never sell bad wines--not I! I know better than to drink them myself." He started and rose; and, before he took the little wooden drinking-cup, bowed to her, raising his cap with a grave, courteous obeisance; a bow that had used to be noted in throne-rooms for its perfection of grace.
"Ah, ma belle, is it you ?" he said wearily.

"You do me much honor." Cigarette gave a little petulant twist to the tap of her wine-barrel.
She was not used to that style of salutation.

She half liked it--half resented it.

It made her wish, with an impatient scorn for the wish, that she knew how to read and had not her hair cut short like a boy's--a weakness the little vivandiere had never been visited with before.
"Morbleu!" she said pettishly.