As for reporting, leave that
to me. I shall tell them I left you on guard. That will square things if
you are late at the barrack."
"But that will give you so much trouble, Cigarette."
"Trouble? Morbleu! Do you think I am like that silver pheasant yonder?
Lend me your horse, and I shall be in the town in ten minutes!"
She vaulted, as she spoke, into the saddle; he laid his hand on the
bridle and stopped her.
"Wait! I have not thanked you half enough, my brave little champion. How
am I to show you my gratitude?"
For a moment the bright, brown, changeful face, that could look so
fiercely scornful, so sunnily radiant, so tempestuously passionate, and
so tenderly childlike, in almost the same moment, grew warm as the warm
suns that had given their fire to her veins; she glanced at him almost
shyly, while the moonlight slept lustrously in the dark softness of
her eyes; there was an intense allurement in her in that moment--the
allurement of a woman's loveliness, bitterly as she disdained a woman's
charms. It might have told him, more plainly than words, how best he
could reward her for the shot that had saved him; yet, though a man on
whom such beguilement usually worked only too easily and too often, it
did not now touch him. He was grateful to her, but, despite himself, he
was cold to her; despite himself, the life which that little hand that
he held had taken so lightly made it the hand of a comrade to be grasped
in alliance, but never the hand of a mistress to steal to his lips and
to lie in his breast.
Pages:
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455