"Why, you are French, Mademoiselle, and of a different name!" She glanced up now into my puzzled face, a bit shyly, yet with some of the old roguishness visible in her eyes.
"My mother was indeed French, but my father was an American soldier," she said rapidly, as if eager to have the explanation ended.

"You never asked my name, save that one night when we first met amid the sand, and then I gave you only that by which I have been most widely known.

None except my father ever called me Elsa; to all others I was always Toinette.

But I am Roger Matherson's only child." It was clear enough now, and the deception had been entirely my own, rendered possible by strange chances of omission, by rare negligence of speech--aided by my earlier impression that she whom I sought was a mere child.
"And 't was Sister Celeste who told you whom I sought ?" I asked, for lack of courage to say more.
"Yes, to-night, while we waited for you beside the ruins of the old factory.

Oh, how far away it all seems now!" and she pointed backward across the voters.