She was wearing a toilette of white crêpe de chine, and a large favour of bright purple Costa-Rica roses.
“Soon as de sun drop, dey set out, deah: so de manicu’ say.”
“What shall we do till then?”
“... or, de pistols!” she fluted, encircling an arm about his neck.
“Destructive kitten,” he murmured, kissing, one by one, her red, polished nails.
“Honey! Come on.”
He frowned.
It seemed a treason almost to his last mistress, an exotic English girl, perpetually shivering, even in the sun, this revolver practice on the empty Quinine-bottles she had left behind. Poor Meraude. It was touching what faith she had had in a dose of quinine! Unquestionably she had been faithful to that. And, dull enough, too, it had made her. With her albums of photographs, nearly all of midshipmen, how insufferably had she bored him:—“This one, darling, tell me, isn’t he—I, really—he makes me—and this one, darling! An Athenian viking, with hair like mimosa, and what ravishing hands!—oh my God!—I declare—he makes me—” Poor Meraude; she had been extravagant as well.
“Come on, an’ break some bokkles!”
“There’s not a cartridge left,” he told her, setting her on his knee.