The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1901-05-30


THURSDA EzA % 1
q violent clash on her love FOR the
spopulace and their liberty.
She looked moment longer through
the gilded scrollwork, then thrust her
pistols well within her sash and, push
ing herself through the prickly cactus
hedge, launched herself with inimi-
table dexterity on to the other side of
the cacti. She crossed the breadth Of
the grounds under the heavy shade Of
arbutus trees with hare's fleetness,
and stood second looking at the open
windows and the terraces that lay
before them, brightly lighted by the
summer moon and by the lamps that
sparkled among the shrubs. Then
down she dropped, as quickly, as
lightly, as young setter. 2
"Ah!' she said, quickly and sharply,
with a deep drawn breath. The single
ejaculation was at once menace, a
tenderness, a whirlwind Of rage, a vol
ume of disdain, a world of pity. It
was" intensely French, and the whole
nature of Cigarette was in it. 49,.
Yet all she saw was a small and bril-
liant group sauntering to and fro be-
fore the open windows after dinner,
listening to the bands and laughing low
and softly, and at some distance from
them, beneath the shade of cedar, the
figure Of corporal of chasseurs, calm
erect, motionless, as though he were
the figure of soldier cast in bronze.
"A true soldierv' she muttered where
she lay among the rhododendrons, while
her eyes grew very soft as she gave the
highest word of praise that her whole
range Of language held. "A true SOL
der! How he keeps his promised. But
it must be bitter.''
81 She looked awhile very wistfully at
the chasseur where he stood under the
Lebanon boughs; then her glance swept
bright as hawks over the terrace and
lighted with president hatred on the
central form of all, woman's. There
We're two other great: ladies there, but
she passed them and darted with un-
erring instinct on that proud, fair, pa
trician head with it's naughty, staglike
carriage and the crown Of its golden
hair.
Cigarette had seen grandes danes by
the thousand, but now for the first time
the sight Of one of those aristocrats
smote her with a keen, hot sting of
heartburning jealousy, with sudden
perception, quick as thought, bitter as
gall, wounding and swift and poignant,
OF what this womanhood that he had
said she herself had lost might be in
it's highest and purest shape.
"Unsexed-he said l was unsexed."
she unused, while her teeth clinched on
the ruby fullness of her lips, and her
heart swelled half with impotent rage,
half with unconfessed pain. For the
first time looking on this imperial for
eign beauty, sweeping so slowly and so
idly along there in the Algerian star
light, she understood all that she had
missed, all that he had meant when he
had used that single word for which
she had vowed on him her vengeance
and the vengeance of the army of At
RIGA.
IF those are the women that he
knew before he came here, I do not
wonder that he never cared to watch
even my Dance" was the latent, unac-
know!edged thought that was so cruel
to her; the consciousness - which
forced itself in on her while her eyes
jealousy followed the perfect grace of
the one in whom instinct had found
her rival-that, while she had been so
proud of her recklessness and her dev-
lily and her troopers slang and her
deadly skill as shot, she had only
been something very worthless, some
thing very lightly held by those who
liked her for ribald jest, dance and
spahis' supper of headlong riot and
drunken mirth.
The mood did not last. She was too
brave, too fiery, too dauntless, too I'M
tanned. bah! She would faint, dare
say, at the mere sight of these pistols"
she thought, with her old disdain, "and
would stand fire no more than a ga