was at her fiercest. A thousand new emotions had been roused in her
that night, bringing pain with them, that she bitterly resented; and,
moreover, this child of the Army of Africa caught fire at the flame of
battle with instant contagion, and had seen slaughter around her from
her first infancy.

Cecil, disregarding her protest, stooped and raised the fallen Bedouin.
He saw at a glance that she was right; the lean, dark, lustful face was
set in the rigidity of death; the bullet had passed straight through the
temples.

"Did you never see a dead man before?" demanded Cigarette impatiently,
as he lingered--even in this moment he had more thought of this Arab
than he had of her!

He laid the Arab's body gently down, and looked at her with a glance
that, rightly or wrongly, she thought had a rebuke in it.

"Very many. But--it is never a pleasant sight. And they were in drink;
they did not know what they did."

"Pardieu! What divine pity! Good powder and ball were sore wasted, it
seems; you would have preferred to lie there yourself, it appears. I beg
your pardon for interfering with the preference."

Her eyes were flashing, her lips very scornful and wrathful. This was
his gratitude!

"Wait, wait," said Cecil rapidly, laying his hand on her shoulder, as
she flung herself away. "My dear child, do not think me ungrateful. I
know well enough I should be a dead man myself had it not been for your
gallant assistance. Believe me, I thank you from my heart."

"But you think me 'unsexed' all the same! I see, beau lion!"

The word had rankled in her; she could launch it now with telling
reprisal.

He smiled; but he saw that this phrase, which she had overheard, had not
alone incensed, but had wounded her.

"Well, a little, perhaps," he said gently. "How should it be otherwise?
And, for that matter, I have seen many a great lady look on and laugh
her soft, cruel laughter, while the pheasants were falling by hundreds,
or the stags being torn by the hounds. They called it 'sport,' but there
was not much difference--in the mercy of it, at least--from your war.
And they had not a tithe of your courage."

The answer failed to conciliate her; there was an accent of compassion
in it that ill-suited her pride, and a lack of admiration that was not
less new and unwelcome.

"It was well for you that I was unsexed enough to be able to send an
ounce of lead into a drunkard!" she pursued with immeasurable disdain.
"If I had been