lowed from the lance-wound on his shoulder.

He was not dead; he was not even in peril of death. She knew enough of
medical lore to know that it was but the insensibility of exhaustion and
suffocation; and she did not care that he should waken. She dropped her
head over him, moving her hand softly among the masses of his curls,
and watching the quickening beatings of his heart under the bare, strong
nerves. Her face grew tender, and warm, and eager, and melting with a
marvelous change of passionate hues. She had all the ardor of southern
blood; without a wish he had wakened in her a love that grew daily and
hourly, though she would not acknowledge it. She loved to see him lie
there as though he were asleep, to cheat herself into the fancy that
she watched his rest to wake it with a kiss on his lips. In that
unconsciousness, in that abandonment, he seemed wholly her own; passion
which she could not have analyzed made her bend above him with a
half-fierce, half-dreamy delight in that solitary possession of his
beauty, of his life.

The restless movements of little Flick-Flack detached a piece of
twine passed round his favorite's throat; the glitter of gold arrested
Cigarette's eyes. She caught what the poodle's impatient caress
had broken from the string. It was a small, blue-enamel medallion
bonbon-box, with a hole through it by which it had been slung--a tiny
toy once costly, now tarnished, for it had been carried through many
rough scenes and many years of hardship; had been bent by blows struck
at the breast against which it rested, and was clotted now with blood.
Inside it was a woman's ring, of sapphires and opals.

She looked at both close, in the glow of the setting sun; then passed
the string through and fastened the box afresh. It was a mere trifle,
but it sufficed to banish her dream; to arouse her to contemptuous,
impatient bitterness with that new weakness that had for the hour broken
her down to the level of this feverish folly. He was beautiful--yes!
She could not bring herself to hate him; she could not help the brimming
tears blinding her eyes when she looked at him, stretched senseless
thus. But he was wedded to his past; that toy in his breast, whatever it
might be, whatever tale might cling to it, was sweeter to him than her
lips would ever be. Bah! there were better men than he; why had she not
let him lie and die as he might, under the pile of dead?

Bah! she could have killed herself for her foll