“You’re not looking very well,” he commented. “Is there anything the matter?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “The matter is here,” she answered, tapping her heart.
“No, not love,” she replied, with sudden intensity. “Hate, hate!”
He shook his head. “That’s bad. Whom do you hate?”
There was tragedy in her face; and Daniel, in his simple wisdom, guessed that what she needed was the friendship of a man who had no ulterior motive. He looked along the street, and, seeing that there was a large French café on the opposite side, asked her whether she would care to go in there and have coffee with him.
[Illustration: _A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY—BURNING SANDS_]
She hesitated for a moment; but when he had explained that he had no more than half an hour to spare, and that he could not employ the time better than by talking to her, she crossed the street with him and entered the café.
“Now tell me what your trouble is,” he said, when they were sipping their coffee at a table in the almost deserted saloon.
“O, it is nothing,” she replied. “I suppose I am ill. I have—how do you say?—the ’ump, eh? If I had the courage I should suicide myself; but the priest he tell me that the little devils in hell are men, and the angels in heaven are men: so you see I cannot escape from men.”
“Oh, men are not so bad,” he told her. “You, of course, see them under rather startling circumstances; and, if I may say so, you can’t always judge of what a man is by looking at a subaltern in the Guards.”
She laughed. “But they tell me they are the élite of England.”
“Yes, poor lads,” he answered; “but it’s not their fault that they think so: it’s due to other men being so bashful.”
Almost as he spoke a young officer walked past the café, under the awnings, with an expression on his face which suggested that he detected a very unpleasant smell in the world. He glanced into the saloon, and, seeing Lizette, looked quickly in the other direction.
“That is one of them,” she said. “He come to me every Sunday after Church.”
Daniel turned his eyes to her, and there was pity and horror in them. “Ah, my girl, no wonder you hate us,” he declared. “If I were you, I’d try not to speak to a man for, say, six months.”
“But how to live?” she asked. “I must get the money to live.”