human
You wonder why I tell you this?
gpt
No, I don't wonder. Perhaps you feel it does you good to speak. It's strange music!--stirs one up, somehow--makes one think of things. And I suppose you trust me? You can. But don't go any farther unless you're sure you want to.
human
I do want to! burst out the Spaniard.
gpt
I've wanted to from the first--since you helped me about the clothes. Only you're a reserved fellow yourself. I didn't care to have you think me a gusher. You guessed why I begged for the clothes?
human
I didn't let myself dwell on it too much.
gpt
You must have guessed. Of course I mean to desert the first chance I get.
human
It's a beastly risk. Did you see that awful photograph the colonel told the non-coms to pass around for us to look at, as a warning against desertion?
gpt
The poor wretch they found in the desert, across the Moroccan border, the man who ran away from Bel Abbés before we came? Yes, I saw the picture. Ghastly! And to think it's the women who mutilate men like that! But I shan't try to escape by way of Morocco. The danger I'll run is only from being caught and sent to the penal battalion--the awful 'Batt d'Aff.' It's a bad enough danger, for I might as well be dead as in prison--better, for I'd be out of misery. But I must run the risk. I enlisted in the Legion for its protection in getting to Africa, because I was in danger of arrest. And you know the Legion, once it's got a man, won't give him up to the police unless he's a murderer. I'm not that, though I came near it. Even while I signed for five years' service, I knew I should have to desert the minute I could hope to get away. I shall wait now till the big march begins, and get as far south as the rest of you go, in my direction--the direction I want. Then I shall cut away.
human
God help you!
gpt
Maybe He will, though I'm a man of no religion. Is love the next best thing? Everything I've done so far, and what I have to do, is for love. Does that make you think me a fool?
human
No.
gpt
I have to save a girl from being given to a man who isn't fit to kiss her little embroidered shoes--bless them! To save her from him--or from suicide. The letter told me she would rather die than marry him. That's why I'm not in Paris to-night. There'd been other letters before; she said in the one which reached me at the theatre--reached me in the midst of rehearsal--thank God--if there is a God--I still have till the end of September. The crisis won't come till then, on her seventeenth birthday. But what is five months and a half to a man handicapped as I am? Caught in a trap, and with hardly any money, just when I had a fortune almost in my grasp!
human
I can lend you a little, said Max.
gpt
I've a few hundred dollars left. He laughed.
human
It seems a lot here! These poor chaps look on me as a millionaire, a sort of prince, because I've got something behind the daily five centimes--some dollars to buy decent tobacco for my friends and myself, and pay fellows to do my washing and so on--fellows wild with joy to do it! Jove! It makes me feel a brute to think what a few sous mean to them, gentlemen, some of 'em, who've lived a more luxurious life than I have--and----
gpt
Maybe that's why they're here: because they lived too luxuriously--on other people's money. Tell me, St. George, did you ever hear the name of Manöel Valdez?
human
Valdez? Let me see ... how ... I know, a singer! He sang last winter in New York, in something or other, a small part, and I wasn't there, but I saw great notices. I remember now. Why, you're----
gpt
Yes. You're right. Don't be afraid to speak. I asked for it.
human
Then you _are_----
gpt
Manöel Valdez. Saltenet, the man who wrote 'La Naïlia,' wrote the man's part for me, because he thought I could sing it, and because I understand Arab music as maybe no other European does. I was brought up in the desert. The girl I love is a daughter of the desert. God! How that music they're playing makes me hear her call me, far away from behind her ocean of dunes! There's a secret link binding our souls together. Nothing can keep them apart. Saltenet was my benefactor. He has done everything for me. He would have made my fortune--after I'd made his; but that's human nature! And twelve nights ago I nearly killed him because he wouldn't let me go when that girl called--my desert princess! He vowed he'd have me arrested--anything to stop me. And he tried to hold me by force. I knocked him down in his own private room at the theatre where we were rehearsing, and then I had to make sure he wasn't dead, for his blood was on my hands, my sleeves, my shirt front. It was only concussion of the brain, but I hoped it would keep him still, until I'd got well away. That afternoon an officer I knew had happened to mention before me that a lot of men were being shipped off to Oran for the Foreign Legion. I remembered. It was as if some voice reminded me. Africa was my goal, but I'd next to no money. I thought, why shouldn't France pay? Well, here I am! Now you know why I must desert. Wouldn't you do the same in my place? Have you got it in you, I wonder, to sacrifice everything in life for a woman?
human
I--almost believe I have. But who knows?
gpt
Some day you will know,