Finally she whirled herself into a dark, deserted
Moresco archway, a little out of the town, and dropped on a stone block,
as a swallow, tired of flight, drops on to a bough.
"Is that the way I revenge myself? Ah, bah! I deserve to be killed! When
he called me unsexed--unsexed--unsexed!"--and with each repetition of
the infamous word, so bitter because vaguely admitted to be true, with
her cheeks scarlet and her eyes aflame, and her hands clinched, she
flung one of the ivory wreathes on to the pavement and stamped on it
with her spurred heel until the carvings were ground into powdered
fragments--stamped, as though it were a living foe, and her steel-bound
foot were treading out all its life with burning hate and pitiless
venom.
In the act her passion exhausted itself, as the evil of such warm,
impetuous, tender natures will; she was very still, and looked at the
ruin she had done with regret and a touch of contrition.
"It was very pretty--and cost him weeks of labor, perhaps," she thought.
Then she took all the rest up, one by one, and gazed at them. Things
of beauty had had but little place in her lawless young life; what she
thought beautiful was a regiment sweeping out in full sunlight, with its
eagles, and its colors, and its kettle-drums; what she held as music
was the beat of the reveille and the mighty roll of the great artillery;
what made her pulse throb and her heart leap was to see two fine
opposing forces draw near for the onslaught and thunder of battle.
Pages:
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398