Part 42 (1/2)

”I owe you my life!” he said rapidly. ”But--good G.o.d!--you have shot the fellow dead----”

Cigarette shrugged her shoulders with a contemptuous glance at the Bedouin's corpse.

”To be sure--I am not a bungler.”

”Happily for me, or I had been where he lies now. But wait--let me look; there may be breath in him yet.”

Cigarette laughed, offended and scornful, as with the offense and scorn of one whose first science was impeached.

”Look and welcome; but if you find any life in that Arab, make a laugh of it before all the army to-morrow.”

She was at her fiercest. A thousand new emotions had been roused in her that night, bringing pain with them, that she bitterly resented; and, moreover, this child of the Army of Africa caught fire at the flame of battle with instant contagion, and had seen slaughter around her from her first infancy.

Cecil, disregarding her protest, stooped and raised the fallen Bedouin.

He saw at a glance that she was right; the lean, dark, l.u.s.tful face was set in the rigidity of death; the bullet had pa.s.sed straight through the temples.

”Did you never see a dead man before?” demanded Cigarette impatiently, as he lingered--even in this moment he had more thought of this Arab than he had of her!

He laid the Arab's body gently down, and looked at her with a glance that, rightly or wrongly, she thought had a rebuke in it.

”Very many. But--it is never a pleasant sight. And they were in drink; they did not know what they did.”

”Pardieu! What divine pity! Good powder and ball were sore wasted, it seems; you would have preferred to lie there yourself, it appears. I beg your pardon for interfering with the preference.”

Her eyes were flas.h.i.+ng, her lips very scornful and wrathful. This was his grat.i.tude!

”Wait, wait,” said Cecil rapidly, laying his hand on her shoulder, as she flung herself away. ”My dear child, do not think me ungrateful. I know well enough I should be a dead man myself had it not been for your gallant a.s.sistance. Believe me, I thank you from my heart.”

”But you think me 'uns.e.xed' all the same! I see, beau lion!”

The word had rankled in her; she could launch it now with telling reprisal.

He smiled; but he saw that this phrase, which she had overheard, had not alone incensed, but had wounded her.

”Well, a little, perhaps,” he said gently. ”How should it be otherwise?

And, for that matter, I have seen many a great lady look on and laugh her soft, cruel laughter, while the pheasants were falling by hundreds, or the stags being torn by the hounds. They called it 'sport,' but there was not much difference--in the mercy of it, at least--from your war.

And they had not a t.i.the of your courage.”

The answer failed to conciliate her; there was an accent of compa.s.sion in it that ill-suited her pride, and a lack of admiration that was not less new and unwelcome.

”It was well for you that I was uns.e.xed enough to be able to send an ounce of lead into a drunkard!” she pursued with immeasurable disdain.

”If I had been like that dainty aristocrate down there--pardieu! It had been worse for you. I should have screamed, and fainted, and left you to be killed, while I made a tableau. Oh, ha! that is to be 'feminine,' is it not?”

”Where did you see that lady?” he asked in some surprise.

”Oh, I was there!” answered Cigarette, with a toss of her head southward to where the villa lay. ”I went to see how you would keep your promise.”

”Well, you saw I kept it.”