“Did it treat you ill, then?”
“Not at all.”
“Had you anything you cared for in it?”
“Well—yes.”
“What was it? A woman?”
“No—a horse.”
He stooped his head a little as he said it, and traced more figures slowly in the sand.
“Ah!”
She drew a short, quick breath. She understood that; she would only have laughed at him had it been a woman; Cigarette was more veracious than complimentary in her estimate of her own sex.
“There was a man in the Cuirassiers I knew,” she went on softly, “loved a horse like that;—he would have died for Cossack—but he was a terrible gambler, terrible. Not but what I like to play myself. Well, one day he played and played till he was mad, and everything was gone; and then in his rage he staked the only thing he had left. Staked and lost the horse! He never said a word; but he just slipped a pistol in his pocket, went to the stable, kissed Cossack once—twice—thrice—and shot himself through the heart.”