“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 tithe of your courage.” The answer failed to conciliate her; there was an accent of compassion 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 unsexed 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.” She gave her little teeth a sharp click like the click of a trigger. “Yes. And I would have forgiven you if you had broken it.” “Would you? I should not have forgiven myself.” “Ah! you are just like the Marquise. And you will end like him.” “Very probably.” She knitted her pretty brows, standing there in his path with her pistols thrust in her sash, and her hands resting lightly on her hips, as a good workman rests after a neatly finished job, and her dainty fez set half on one side of her brown, tangled curls, while upon them the intense luster of the moonlight streamed, and in the dust, well-nigh at their feet, lay the gaunt, while-robed form of the dead Arab, with the olive, saturnine face turned upward to the stars. “Why did you give the chessmen to that silver pheasant?” she asked him abruptly. “Silver pheasant?” “Yes. See how she sweeps--sweeps--sweeps so languid, so brilliant, so useless--bah! Why did you give them?” “She admired them. It was not much to give.” “You would not have given them to a daughter of the people.” “Why not?” “Why not? Oh, ha! because her hands would be hard, and brown, and coarse, not fit for those ivory puppets; but hers are white like the ivory, and cannot soil it. She will handle them so gracefully, for five minutes; and then buy a new toy, and let her lapdog break yours!”