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." "You would not have given them to a daughter of the people." "Why not ?" "Why not?
Oh, ha! because her hands would be hard, and brown, and coarse, not fit for those ivory puppets; but hers are white like the ivory, and cannot soil it.

She will handle them so gracefully, for five minutes; and then buy a new toy, and let her lapdog break yours!" "Like enough." He said it with his habitual gentle temper, but there was a shadow of pain in the words.

The chessmen had become in some sort like living things to him, through long association; he had parted from them not without regret, though for the moment courtesy and generosity of instinct had overcome it; and he knew that it was but too true how in all likelihood these trifles of his art, that had brought him many a solace and been his companion through many a lonely hour, would be forgotten by the morrow, where he had bestowed them, and at best put aside in a cabinet to lie unnoticed among bronzes or porcelain, or be set on some boudoir table to be idled with in the mimic warfare that would serve to cover some listless flirtation.
Cigarette, quick to sting, but as quick to repent using her sting, saw the regret in him; with the rapid, uncalculating liberality of an utterly unselfish and intensely impulsive nature, she hastened to make amends by saying what was like gall on her tongue in the utterance: "Tiens!" she said quickly.