"Ah, yes, I am going," he answered, with a laugh and a keen glance of
excitement. "War is a necessary evil, mademoiselle, and assists
promotion. Why should you hate it?"

"Because we cannot interfere in it," replied Mademoiselle Brun, with a
snap of the lips. "We shall find Denise in the garden to the north of the
house, picking green beans, Monsieur le Comte," continued Mademoiselle
Brun, with a glance in his direction.

"Then I shall have time to help with the beans before I go to the war,"
answered Lory; and they walked on in silence.

The garden was but half cultivated--a luxuriant thicket of fruit and
weed, of trailing vine and wild clematis. The air of it was heavy with a
hundred scents, and, in the shade, was cool, and of a mossy odour rarely
found in Southern seas.

They did not see Denise at first, and then suddenly she emerged at the
other end of the weed-grown path where they stood. Lory hurried forward,
hat in hand, and perceived that Denise made a movement, as if to go back
into the shadow, which was immediately restrained.

Mademoiselle Brun did not follow Lory, but turned back towards the house.

"If they must quarrel," she said to herself, "they may do it without my
assistance."

And Denise seemed, indeed, ready to fall out with her neighbour, for she
came towards him with heightened colour and a flash of annoyance in her