The color was fast passing from her lips, and a mortal pallor settling
there in the stead of that rich, bright hue, once warm as the scarlet
heart of the pomegranate. Her head leaned back on Cecil's breast and she
felt the great burning tears fall, one by one, upon her brow as he
hung speechless over her; she put her hand upward and touched his eyes
softly.
"Chut! What is it to die--just to die? You have lived your martyrdom;
I could not have done that. Listen, just one moment. You will be rich.
Take care of the old man--he will not trouble long--and of Vole-qui-veut
and Etoile, and Boule Blanche, and the rat, and all the dogs, will you?
They will show you the Chateau de Cigarette in Algiers. I should not
like to think that they would starve."
She felt his lips move with the promise he could not find voice to
utter; and she thanked him with that old child-like smile that had lost
nothing of its light.
"That is good; they will be happy with you. And see here--that Arab must
have back his white horse; he alone saved you. Have heed that they spare
him. And make my grave somewhere where my army passes; where I can hear
the trumpets, and the arms, and the passage of the troops--O God! I
forgot! I shall not wake when the bugles sound. It will all end now;
will it not? That is horrible, horrible!"
A shudder shook her as, for the moment, the full sense that all her
glowing, redundant, sunlit, passionate life was crushed out forever from
its place upon the earth forced itself on and overwhelmed her.
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