"But—"
"But I tell you it cannot continue so."
"In what have I offended you, La Louve?"
"Why, I am not the same person I was when you came here; no, I have neither courage, strength, nor boldness."
Then suddenly checking herself, La Louve pulled up the sleeve of her gown, and showing La Goualeuse her white arm, powerful, and covered with black down, she showed her, on the upper part of it, an indelible tattooing, representing a blue dagger half plunged in a red heart; over this emblem were these words:
MORT AUX LÂCHES!
MARTIAL
P. L. V. (pour la vie.)
(DEATH TO COWARDS!
MARTIAL
FOR LIFE!)
"Do you see that?" asked La Louve.
"Yes; and it is so shocking, it quite frightens me," said La Goualeuse, turning away her head.
"When Martial, my lover, wrote, with a red-hot needle, these words on my arm, 'Death to Cowards!' he thought me brave; if he knew my behaviour for the last three days, he would stick his knife in my body, as this dagger is driven into this heart,—and he would be right, for he wrote here, 'Death to Cowards!' and I am a coward."