There she dropped on a broad stone step, and leaned her head on her
hand.
"Unsexed! Unsexed! What did he mean?" she thought, while for the first
time, with a vague sense of his meaning, tears welled hot and bitter
into her sunny eyes, while the pained color burned in her face. Those
tears were the first that she had ever known, and they were cruel ones,
though they lasted but a little time; there was too much fire in the
young Bohemian of the Army not to scorch them as they rose. She stamped
her foot on the stones passionately, and her teeth were set like a
little terrier's as she muttered:
"Unsexed! Unsexed! Bah, Monsieur Aristocrat! If you think so, you shall
find your thought right; you shall find Cigarette can hate as men hate,
and take her revenge as soldiers take theirs!"
CHAPTER XVII.
UNDER THE HOUSES OF HAIR.
It was just sunset.
The far-off summits of the Djurjura were tinted with the intense glare
of the distant pines and cypresses cut sharply against the rose-warmed
radiance of the sky. On the slopes of the hills white cupolas and
terraced gardens, where the Algerine haouach still showed the taste and
luxury of Algerine corsairs, rose up among their wild olive shadows
on the groves of the lentiscus. In the deep gorges that were channeled
between the riven rocks the luxuriance of African vegetation ran riot;
the feathery crests of tossing reeds, the long, floating leaves of
plants, filling the dry water-courses of vanished streams; the broad
foliage of the wild fig, and the glowing, dainty blossoms of the
oleander, wherever a trace of brook, or pool, or rivulet let it put
forth its beautiful coronal, growing one in another in the narrow
valleys, and the curving passes, wherever broken earth or rock gave
shelter from the blaze and heat of the North African day.
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