He has a tender character, full of tender and pretty sentiments; and in the dark at night, and sometimes by day when he can get me apart with him, he laments a mother and a sweetheart.
Do you know what made him take me for a confidant ?' She parted her lips with a look, but did not speak.

The look burned all through me with a sudden vital heat.
'Because I had once seen, in marching by, the belfry of his village!' I continued.

'The circumstance is quaint enough.

It seems to bind up into one the whole bundle of those human instincts that make life beautiful, and people and places dear--and from which it would seem I am cut off!' I rested my chin on my knee and looked before me on the ground.

I had been talking until then to hold her; but I was now not sorry she should go: an impression is a thing so delicate to produce and so easy to overthrow! Presently she seemed to make an effort.
'I will take this toy,' she said, laid a five-and-sixpenny piece in my hand, and was gone ere I could thank her.
I retired to a place apart near the ramparts and behind a gun.