She gave her little teeth a sharp click like the click of a trigger.
“Yes. And I would have forgiven you if you had broken it.”
“Would you? I should not have forgiven myself.”
“Ah! you are just like the Marquise. And you will end like him.”
“Very probably.”
She knitted her pretty brows, standing there in his path with her pistols thrust in her sash, and her hands resting lightly on her hips, as a good workman rests after a neatly finished job, and her dainty fez set half on one side of her brown, tangled curls, while upon them the intense luster of the moonlight streamed, and in the dust, well-nigh at their feet, lay the gaunt, while-robed form of the dead Arab, with the olive, saturnine face turned upward to the stars.
“Why did you give the chessmen to that silver pheasant?” she asked him abruptly.
“Silver pheasant?”
“Yes. See how she sweeps—sweeps—sweeps so languid, so brilliant, so useless—bah! Why did you give them?”
“She admired them. It was not much to give.”