A Soldier of the Legion

								

fencing, and his marksmanship. He had been graduated fourth in his
class at West Point three years before, so that he might have chosen the
engineers or artillery; but the cavalry was what he preferred; and here
he was at old Fort Ellsworth, enjoying life hugely and so well helping
others to enjoy life that every one liked him, no one was jealous or
grudged him what he had.
There he stood, this "show young man," well-groomed and smart in his
full-dress uniform of second lieutenant of cavalry, the stripes and
splashes of yellow suiting his dark skin: a slim, erect figure, not very
tall, but a soldier every inch of him, though the wide-apart blue eyes
gave the square-chinned face a boyish air of wistfulness, even when he
smiled his delightfully childlike, charming smile. Girls glanced at him
as they swung past in their partners' arms, noticing how tense was the
look on the brown face, and how the straight eyebrows--even blacker than
the smooth dark hair--were drawn together in expectant concentration.
Suddenly the door opened. The curtain-raiser was over. The drama of the
evening was about to begin.
It seemed wonderful that the band could keep presence of mind to go on
playing the "Merry Widow," instead of stopping short with a gasp and
crash of instruments, to start again with the "Tango Trance," her
dance in "Girls' Love."
She flashed into the ballroom like a dazzling fairy thing, all white and
gold and glitter. Because she knew that--so to speak--the curtain would
ring up for her entrance, and not an instant before, in the fondness of
her heart for young officers she had not even delayed long enough to
change the dress she wore as the Contessa Gaëta in the third act of
"Girls' Love." The musical comedy had been written for her. In it she
had made her first almost startling success two years ago in London,
where, according to the newspapers, all young men worth their salt, from
dukes down to draymen, had fallen in love with her. She had captured New
York, too, and now she and her company were rousing enthusiasm and
coining money on their tour of the larger Western cities.
The Gaëta dress looked as if it were made of a million dewdrops turned
to diamonds and sprinkled over a lacy spider-web; the web swathing the
tall and wandlike figure of Miss Billie Brookton in a way to show that
she had all the delicate perfections of a Tanagra statuette.
Despite the distraction of her entrance, followed by that of the little
gray lady engaged as her aunt, the musicians had the self-control to go
on with their "Merry Widowing," irrelevant as it now seemed. The dancers
went on dancing, also, though the dreaded dimness of extinction had
fallen upon even the brightest, prettiest girls, who tried to look
particularly rapturous in order to prove that nothing had happened. They
felt their partners' interest suddenly withdrawn from them and focussed
upon the radiance at the door. No use ignoring that Radiance, even if