Once through the cactus hedge her old spirit returned; she shook herself
angrily with petulant self-scorn; she swore a little, and felt that the
fierce, familiar words did her good like brandy poured down her throat;
she tossed her head like a colt that rebels against the gall of the
curb; then, fleet as a fawn, she dashed down the moonlit road at topmost
speed. "She can't do what I do!" she thought.
And she ran the faster, and sang a drinking-song of the Spahis all the
louder, because still at her heart a dull pain was aching.
CHAPTER XXI.
CIGARETTE EN CONDOTTIERA.
Cigarette always went fast. She had a bird-like way of skimming her
ground that took her over it with wonderful swiftness; all the tassels,
and ribbon knots, and sashes with which her uniform was rendered so gay
and so distinctive fluttering behind her; and her little military boots,
with the bright spurs twinkling, flying over the earth too lightly for
a speck of dust,--though it lay thick as August suns could parch it,--to
rest upon her. Thus she went now, along the lovely moonlight; singing
her drinking song so fast and so loud that, had it been any other than
this young fire-eater of the African squadrons, it might have been
supposed she sang out of fear and bravado--two things, however, that
never touched Cigarette; for she exulted in danger as friskily as a
young salmon exults in the first, crisp, tumbling crest of a sea-wave,
and would have backed up the most vainglorious word she could have
spoken with the cost of her life, had need been.
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