h of ice, while time traveled on, and the first afternoon shadows
crept across the bare floor. Every now and then, dimly through the
openings of the windows, came a distant roll of drums, a burst of
military music, an echo of the laughter of a crowd; and then her head
went up eagerly, an impatient shade swept across her expressive face.

It was a fete-day in Algiers; there were flags and banners fluttering
from the houses; there were Arab races and Arab maneuvers; there was a
review of troops for some foreign general; there were all the mirth and
the mischief that she loved, and that never went on without her; and she
knew well enough that from mouth to mouth there was sure to be asking,
"Mais ou done est Cigarette?" Cigarette, who was the Generalissima of
Africa!

But still she never moved; though all her vivacious life was longing to
be out and in their midst, on the back of a desert horse, on the head
of a huge drum, perched on the iron support of a high-hung lantern,
standing on a cannon while the Horse Artillery swept full gallop, firing
down a volley of argot on the hot homage of a hundred lovers, drinking
creamy liqueurs and filling her pockets with bonbons from handsome
subalterns and aids-de-camp, doing as she had done ever since she could
remember her first rataplan. But she never moved. She knew that in
the general gala these sick-beds would be left more deserted and less
soothed than ever. She knew, too, that it was for the sake of this man,
lying dying here from the lunge of a Bedouin lance through his lungs,
that the ivory wreaths and crosses and statuettes had been sold.

And Cigarette had done more than this ere now many a time for her
"children."

The day stole on; Leon Ramon lay very quiet; the ice for his chest
and the song for his ear gave him that semi-oblivion, dreamy and
comparatively painless, which was the only mercy which could come to
him. All the chamber was unusually still; on three of the beds the sheet
had been drawn over the face of the sleepers, who had sunk to a last
sleep since the morning rose. The shadows lengthened, the hours followed
one another; Cigarette sang on to herself with few pauses; whenever she
did so pause to lay soaked linen on the soldier's hot forehead, or to
tend him gently in those paroxysms that wrenched the clotted blood from
off his lungs, there was a light on her face that did not come from the
golden heat of the African sun.

Such a light those who know we