"Read it again!" she said simply, when all was ended. He started and
looked up at her face; the voice had not one accent of its own tone
left.
He obeyed, and read it once more to the end. Then a loud, shuddering
sigh escaped her, like the breath of one stifling under flames.
"Shot!" she said vacantly. "Shot!"
Her vengeance had come without her once lifting her hand to summon it.
The old man rose hurriedly.
"Child! Art thou ill?"
"The blow was struck for her!" she muttered. "It was that night, you
hear--that night!"
"What night? Thou lookest so strangely! Dost thou love this doomed
soldier?"
Cigarette laughed--a laugh whose echo thrilled horribly through the
lonely Moresco courtway.
"Love? Love? I hated him, look you! So I said. And I longed for my
vengeance. It is come!"
She was still a moment; her white, parched mouth quivering as though
she were under physical torture, her strained eyes fastened on the empty
air, the veins in her throat swelling and throbbing till they glowed to
purple. Then she crushed the letter in one hand, and flew, fleet as any
antelope through the streets of the Moorish quarter, and across the city
to the quay.
The people ever gave way before her; but now they scattered like
frightened sheep from her path. There was something that terrified
them in that bloodless horror set upon her face, and in that fury of
resistless speed with which she rushed upon her way.
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