[26]

[26]

“I am, you see—oh, I can’t explain now,” Nona protested. “But, Lieutenant Hume, if you have nothing very important to do, won’t you be kind enough to put me on the right bus. I am trying to get back to our pension. And though I am sorry to be so stupid, I am lost and dreadfully frightened.”

The hand that Nona now extended to her English acquaintance was cold with nervousness.

Lieutenant Hume took it and bowed courteously. “Of course I will take you home with the greatest pleasure,” he returned. At the same time he smiled to himself:

“Girls are indeed strange creatures, say what you will! Here is a young American girl who has been doing Red Cross work near the battlefield. She has been able to keep her head and remain cool and collected among war’s horrors, but because she has been spoken to on the street by a young ruffian she is terrified and confused.” Possibly she would have scorned his protection in the face of an artillery charge, when[27] under the present conditions a masculine protector was fairly useful.

[27]

Now for the first time the young French officer spoke. He had just given his captive a rough shake and then straightened him up again after a second attempt to get away.

“What shall I do with this fellow, Mademoiselle?” he asked, speaking English with difficulty, but showing extraordinarily white, even teeth under a small, dark moustache. Indeed, Nona decided that she had never seen a more charming and debonair figure than the young French officer, when he finally engaged her attention. He could scarcely have been more than five feet, four inches tall, yet his figure was perfectly built. He was slender, but from the casual fashion in which he gripped the other man, who was several inches taller and far heavier, he must have been extraordinarily strong.

“Oh, let the man go, please,” Nona murmured weakly. “Yes, I know I should have you turn him over to a gendarme and appear against him in court, but really I should hate doing it.”

[28]

[28]

The girl smiled at the young French officer’s evident disappointment. He made no protest, however; only he gave the man another half-savage shake and said rapidly in French:

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