And you are too pretty to be a cynic." "A what ?" She did not know the word.

"Is that a good cigar you have?
Give me one.

Do women smoke in your old country ?" "Oh, yes--many of them." "Where is it, then ?" "I have no country--now." "But the one you had ?" "I have forgotten I ever had one." "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.