human
I've done nothing, Monsieur le Colonel, stammered Max.
gpt
I had to come. I have business with a person at the Hotel Splendide. It is Mademoiselle who is kind to me in saying----
human
Could he not take me to the hotel to wait for you? Sanda cut in.
gpt
I shouldn't have interrupted you in such a place as this, and at such a time, my father, if I could have helped doing so, even though I recognized your face from the old photograph that is my treasure. But acting on impulse is my greatest fault, the aunts all say. And when I saw you I cried out before I stopped to think. Then I drew back, but it was too late. I have taken you from some duty.
human
I came officially with my comrades to meet General Sauvanne, who is visiting our Algerian garrisons, said DeLisle. He glanced again at Max, giving him one of those soldier looks which long experience has taught to penetrate flesh and bone and brain down to a man's hidden self.
gpt
It is true that I have no right to excuse myself for my own private affairs. He hesitated, almost imperceptibly, then turned to Max.
human
Add to your past kindness by taking my daughter to the hotel, Monsieur, where in my name she will engage a room for herself--since, unfortunately, I have no home to offer her. I will go with you both to a cab, and then return to duty. My child, I will see you again before _dejeuner_.
gpt
It is my daughter, who has come unexpectedly. A young friend whom I can trust to see her to the hotel will take her there, and I am at your service when I have put them into a cab.
human
What do you think? cried Sanda, as the rickety vehicle rattled them toward the nearest gate of the walled town.
gpt
Have I failed with him--or have I succeeded?
human
Succeeded, Max answered.
gpt
Don't you feel it?
human
I hoped it. Oh, Mr. Doran, I am going to love him!
gpt
I don't wonder, Max said.
human
I'm sure he's worth it.
gpt
Yet I saw by your look when I spoke of him before, that you were thinking him heartless.
human
I had no right to think anything.
gpt
I gave you the right, by confiding in you. But I didn't confide enough, to do my father justice. I knew he wasn't heartless, though he couldn't bear the sight of me when I was a baby, and put me out of his life. He has always said that a soldier's life was not for a young girl to share. I knew he had a heart, _because_ of that, not in spite of it. It was that he loved my mother so desperately, and I'd robbed him of her. Now you've seen him, you must let me tell you a little----
human
Would he wish it?
gpt
Yes, if he knew why, and if he knew you, and what you are going through at this time. He fell in love with my mother at first sight in Paris, and she with him. He was on leave, and she was there with her parents from Ireland. He'd never meant to marry, but he was swept off his feet. Mother's people wouldn't hear of it. They took her home in a hurry, and tried to make her marry some one else. She nearly did--because they were stronger than she. She wrote father a letter of good-bye, to his post in the southern desert, where he was stationed then. He supposed, when he read the letter, that she was already married when he got it. But suddenly she appeared--as unexpectedly as I appeared to-day. She'd run away from home, because she couldn't live without him. Oh, how well I understand her! Think of the joy! It was like waking from a dreadful dream for both of them. They were going to be married at once, though mother was half dead with fatigue and excitement after her long, hurried journey; but on their wedding eve she was taken ill, and became delirious. It was typhoid fever. She had got it somehow on the journey. She had come without stopping to rest, from Dublin to Touggourt, where father was stationed. They say it's wild there even now. It was far wilder then, more than twenty-one years ago. He nursed mother himself, scarcely eating or sleeping: not taking off his clothes for weeks. One of his aunts--my great-aunt--told me the story. It came to her from a friend of father's. He never spoke of it. For three months mother wasn't out of danger. Father was her nurse, her doctor, not her husband. But at last she was well again. They had their honeymoon in a tent in the desert. She loved the desert, then--or thought she did. Afterward, though, she changed, for I was coming, and she was ill again. By that time they were stationed still farther south. She grew so homesick for the north that my father got leave. They started to travel by easy stages through the desert, with a small caravan. Their hope was to reach Algiers, and to get to France long before the baby should come; but the heat grew suddenly terrible, and one day they were caught in a fearful sandstorm. My mother was terrified. I was born two months before the time. That same night she died, while the storm was still raging; and before she went, she begged my father to promise, whatever happened, not to leave her body buried in the desert. He did promise. And then began his martyrdom. The caravan could not march fast because of me. A negro woman who'd come as mother's maid took care of me as well as she could, and fed me on condensed milk. Strange I should have lived.... My father had his men make for my mother's body a case of many tins, which they spread open and soldered together, with lead from bullets they melted. In the next oasis they cut down a palm tree and hollowed out the trunk for a coffin. They sealed up the tin case in it, and the coffin travelled on the camel mother had ridden when she was alive, in one of those beautiful hooded bassourahs you must have seen in pictures. At night the coffin rested in my father's tent, and he lay beside it as he had lain beside my mother when she lived, and they were happy. Because she'd been a Catholic, and because she'd always hated the dark, father burned candles on the coffin always till dawn; and the men who loved him looked for wild flowers in the desert to lay upon it. He had forty days, and forty nights, marching through the desert with the dead body of his love, before they came to the railway. Then he took mother to France, and left me with his two aunts there. Now do you wonder he never loved me, or wanted to have me with him?
human
No, perhaps not,