ility, of a grand nature that has gone wholly untutored and
unguided; and she had the power of southern vengeance in her, though she
had also the swift temper. It was bitter, beyond any other bitterness
that could have wounded her, for the spoilt, victorious, imperious,
little empress of the Army of Algeria to feel that, though she had given
his life twice back to the man, she was less to him than the tiny white
dog that nestled in his breast; that she, who never before had endured a
slight, or known what neglect could mean, gave care, and pity, and aid,
and even tenderness, to one whose only thought was for a woman who had
accorded him nothing but a few chill syllables of haughty condescension!

He lay there unconscious of her presence, tossing wearily to and fro in
fevered, unrefreshing sleep, murmuring incoherent words of French and
English strangely mingled; and Cigarette crouched on the ground, with
the firelight playing all over her picturesque, childlike beauty, and
her large eyes strained and savage, yet with a strange, wistful pain
in them; looking out at the moonlight where the headless body lay in a
cold, gray sea of shadow.

Yet she did not leave him.

She was too generous for that. "What is right is right. He is a soldier
of France," she muttered, while she kept her vigil. She felt no want of
sleep; a hard, hateful wakefulness seemed to have banished all rest from
her; she stayed there all the night so, with the touch of water on his
forehead, or of cooled wine to his lips, by the alteration of the linen
on his wounds, or the shifting of the rough forage that made his bed.
But she did it without anything of that loving, lingering attendance
she had given before; she never once drew out the task longer than it
needed, or let her hands wander among his hair, or over his lips, as she
had done before.

And he never once was conscious of it; he never once knew that she was
near. He did not waken from the painful, delirious, stupefied slumber
that had fallen on him; he only vaguely felt that he was suffering pain;
he only vaguely dreamed of what he murmured of--his past, and the beauty
of the woman who had brought all the memories of that past back on him.

And this was Cigarette's reward--to hear him mutter wearily of the proud
eyes and of the lost smile of another!

The dawn came at last; her constant care and the skill with which she
had cooled and dressed his wounds had done him infinite service; the
fe