He obeyed, and read it once more to the end. Then a loud, shuddering sigh escaped her, like the breath of one stifling under flames.
“Shot!” she said vacantly. “Shot!”
Her vengeance had come without her once lifting her hand to summon it.
The old man rose hurriedly.
“Child! Art thou ill?”
“The blow was struck for her!” she muttered. “It was that night, you hear—that night!”
“What night? Thou lookest so strangely! Dost thou love this doomed soldier?”
Cigarette laughed—a laugh whose echo thrilled horribly through the lonely Moresco courtway.
“Love? Love? I hated him, look you! So I said. And I longed for my vengeance. It is come!”
She was still a moment; her white, parched mouth quivering as though she were under physical torture, her strained eyes fastened on the empty air, the veins in her throat swelling and throbbing till they glowed to purple. Then she crushed the letter in one hand, and flew, fleet as any antelope through the streets of the Moorish quarter, and across the city to the quay.