a person of great powers of concentration. As his glance fell upon the young couple, the Captain started slightly and then looked away.
"Who's for a stroll?" he remarked, half rising. But his suggestion was not adopted, for glasses were charged, cigarettes alight, the shade of the café and awning very agreeable, and the sunshine hot without.
"Have an apéritif first, mon ami, and be restful," said a Zouave officer, and tinkled the little table-bell loudly.
The Englishman half-consciously turned toward the sound, and looked away again without noticing the baleful, steady glare fixed upon him through the glasses of the Lieutenant.
"Dame!" grunted that officer, and smote his brow in an agony of exasperation at the failure of his memory.... Curse it! Was he getting old? He had the fellow's name and the circumstances of his case on the tip of his tongue, so to speak—at the tips of his fingers, as it were—and he could not say the word he was bursting to say; could not lay his twitching mental fingers on the details.... He knew.... He was right.... He would have it in a minute.
A paper-boy passed the long front of the café and shouted some wholly unintelligible word as he gazed over the serried ranks of chairs and loungers.
"What does he say, Bill?" asked the girl. "It sounds like Barin. How ill the poor lad looks! Fancy having to sell papers for a living when you are starving and horribly ill, as he obviously is," and as her hand stole to her charitable purse, she gratefully thought of the utter security, peace, comfort, and health of her life—now that Bill had linked it to his.... What was the phrase? ... Yes—she had "hitched her wagon to a star"; her poor little homely wagon to the glorious and brilliant star of her Bill's career.... The inquisitorial Lieutenant used the paper-boy for the purposes of his tactics. Rising, he made his way between the chairs and the groups of apéritif-drinking citizens, to where the boy stood, bought a paper, and returned by a route which brought him full face-to-face with the Englishman. Recognition was instantaneous and mutual. The brutal countenance of the elderly Lieutenant was not improved by a sardonic smile and look of mean and petty triumph as he thrust an outstretched index-finger in the Englishman's face and harshly grunted.
"Henri Rrrobinson!" and then laughed a sneering, hideous cackle.
Staring in utter bewilderment from the French officer to her husband, the girl saw with horror that his jaw had dropped, his mouth and eyes were gaping wide, and he had gone as white as a sheet.
"Sergeant Legros!" he whispered.
"Lieutenant Legros," grunted the other.
What had happened? What in the name of the Merciful Father was this? Was she dreaming? Her husband looked deathly. He seemed paralysed with fright.
The Lieutenant half turned, and shouted to a couple of sombre and mysterious-looking gens d'armes who had been standing for some time on the little "island" under the big lamp-post in the middle of the road. As they approached, the Englishman rose to his feet.
"Listen, darling!" he hissed. "Get out of this quick—to the ship. Take a fiacre and say 'P. and O. bateau.' I'll join you all right. They have..."
The Lieutenant put a heavy hand on his shoulder and swung him round.
"Arrest this man," said he to the gens d'armes, "and take him to Fort St. Jean. He is a deserter, one Henri Rrrobinson, from the First Battalion of the Foreign Legion. Deserted from Sidi-bel-Abbès eight years ago. But I knew the dog. Aha!"
The group of officers whom Legros had just left, joined the gathering crowd.
"Poor devil!" said Captain d'Armentières. He too had recognized the soi-disant Henry Robinson.... "Poor girl!" he added. "Poor little soul!" She looked like une nouvelle mariée too. Of course Legros had only done his duty—curse him. Curse him a thousand times for a blackguardly, brutal ruffian. The girl was going to faint.... Her wedding-ring looked brand-new. "If this is his wedding-night, he'll spend it in the salle de police of Fort St. Jean," he reflected. "If he is on his honeymoon, he'll spend it in the cellules until the General Court-Martial at Oran gives him a few years rabiau with the Zephyrs. If he survives that, which is improbable, he will finish his five years of Legion service. No—she won't see much of him during the next decade.... Poor little soul!"
The gens d'armes duly arrested the deserter. He caught the eye of the Captain.
"Captain d'Armentières," said he, "you are a French gentleman. This lady is my wife. We have been married a week. I beg of you to see her safe on board the P. and O. steamer Maloja, which we have just left, for an hour's visit here."
"I will do so," said d'Armentières.
A fat and kindly Frenchman, who understood English, translated for the benefit of the crowd. It became intensely sympathetic—at least with the girl. The French, for some reason, imagine their Foreign Legion to be composed of Germans, and the French do not love Germans.... And then, having commended his wife to d'Armentières (whom he had liked and admired in the past when he had played the fool's prank of joining the Legion "for a lark"), he thought rapidly and clearly....
If they once got him inside Fort St. Jean (the clearing-house for drafts and details going to, and coming from, Algeria—recruits, convalescents, leave-expired, all sorts; Legionaries, Zouaves, Turcos, Spahis, Tirailleurs) he was done. In a short time he would be a convict, in military-convict dress, enduring the living-death of existence in the Zephyrs, the terrible Disciplinary Battalion, compared with whose lot that of the British long-sentence convict at Dartmoor, Portland, or Wormwood Scrubbs is a bed of roses in the lap of luxury. After that—back to the Legion if he were alive to finish his five years, of which there were four unexpired. And his wife—stranded, without money, in Marseilles, unless d'Armentières got her to the ship. And what would she do then—at the end of the voyage? ... God help them! ... A few minutes ago—happiness unspeakable, safety, security, peace, all life before them. Now—in a few minutes he would be in gaol and his adored, adoring wife a deserted, friendless stranger in a strange land.... Would they allow d'Armentières to take her to the ship? Would they want her to give evidence—put her in some kind of prison until the Court-Martial sat? Suppose d'Armentières had not been there, and she had been left to the tender mercies of Legros—or utterly deserted, fainting on a café chair....
Well, things couldn't be much worse (or could they) if he "resisted the police," assaulted the duly-appointed officers of the law in the execution of their duty, and made a break for liberty. No, things couldn't be worse. Neither he nor she would survive the next ten years. And there was a chance, or the ghost of a shadow of a chance. The deck of the Maloja was English soil, and they could not lay a finger on him there. If only she were safe on board, he'd make the attempt. There was a chance—and he had always taken the sporting chance, all his life.... And this vile cur of a Legros! He had many a score to pay off to Sergeant Legros—the prize bully of the XIXth Army Corps. Now this! If he could only have his hands at the throat of Legros. As these thoughts flashed through his brain, "May I say farewell to my wife and see her into a fiacre with you, Captain d'Armentières?" he asked. He appeared to be as cool as he was pale. The Captain was the senior officer present.
"Yes," he said. "I will drive her as quickly as possible to the ship," and willing hands helped the fainting girl into the fiacre.... Was she dying? As she lost her hold and sank into the bottomless depths of unconsciousness she was finally aware that her husband winked at her violently. That wink in a face which was a pallid, tragic mask, was the most dreadful and heartrending thing she had ever seen. Anyhow, it meant some kind of reassurance which he could not put into words without disclosing some plan to his captors. She fainted completely, in the act of wondering whether this was merely that he was putting a good face on it and pretending for her benefit, or whether he really had a plan. Anyhow she was to go to the ship—and, in any case, she was dying of a broken heart....
As he watched his wife driven rapidly away, the Englishman formulated his plans.
He would delay as long as he could in order that his wife might be on board the ship before