IN making their escape from the steamer, Tex Connor and the Manila Kid seized one of the small boats, manning, one at either end, the tackle-falls. Connor was quick, rough, profane. The Kid, breathless with excitement, hesitant, glancing back over the rail for a thinly girlish face that did not, then, appear, worked with ten thumbs at the ropes. Connor's end, the boat, fell first, a short way, nearly pitching him out. He cursed this futile man, his jackal, roundly; then clung to the tackle as the stern fell.... The Kid moaned with pain as the slipping hemp burned the skin off his fingers, but held it just short of disaster.

Hot red flames licked out overhead as the boat jerkily dropped. The women were screaming up there. A white man, the second mate, leaned over, swearing vigorously at them. They passed an open freight gangway, where bodies lay.

“Ready, now!” cried Connor. “Let go with me!”

“Wait a minute, can't you?” whined the Kid. He was peering into the dark interior of the steamer; grasping a moment more; wrapping a handkerchief about his left hand. “My God! Can't a fellow tie up his hand.”

A thin blue figure appeared, stepped lightly over into the boat and dropped on a middle thwart.

“Dixie!” cried the Kid in falsetto.

She wore a cap, and carried an oddly lady-like shopping bag.

“Where'd you come from?” growled Connor.

“I saw you start,” said the girl casually. “Come on—let's get away.”

Connor stared at her; then turned back to his work. The boat struck the water and drifted rapidly away down-stream. Connor, roaring angrily at the Kid, got out an oar.

“What are you doing?” asked Miss Carmichael very quietly.

“Going ashore?” said Connor.

“Oh, come, Tex!” said she. “Use your head.”

He looked sharply, inquiringly, doubtingly at her.

“You two better row straight down-stream as hard as you can,” she added. “You can bet Tom Sung and that gang aren't going to show themselves at Kiu Kiang. They've stopped somewhere below here.”

The Kid, who was nursing his hand, looked up; wrinkled his low forehead that was hatless, and then softly whistled. Connor made no remark, but continued studying the girl with his one eye. Finally, with an effort at reasserting his authority, he growled:

“Take an oar, Jim!”

“But my hands! My God, that rope took all the—”

“Do you expect me to do the rowing, Jim?” said Miss Carmichael.

The Kid yielded then. The girl settled herself comfortably in the stem, looking back at the fire. Soon they were out of the circle of light.

Suddenly Connor drew in his oar; stowed it away.

“Dixie,” he remarked. “You've made up your mind to go through with this business, eh?”

“Certainly,” she replied.

“You'll have to come across if you want my help. I won't go it blind.”

Miss Carmichael glanced back at the red glow in the sky, then out toward the slightly paling East.

“I'll tell you by sunrise,” she said. “The thing won't keep much longer than that, anyhow. It'll have to be fairly quick work.”

“All right,” said Connor. “That's an agreement. Now I'm going to take a nap. This current's taking us down fast enough. When you sight Tom's outfit, wake me up.” With which he curled up in the bow, and soon was snoring.

The Kid stowed his own oar, and crept to the girl's side.

“Careful!” she whispered. “If he should wake up....” She extricated herself from an encircling arm. “Jim—sit still now!—It's time you and I had an understanding. I need you, and I'm going to use you. I don't propose to have you all steamed up, either. You'll need all the nerve you've got. Perhaps more. I'm not at all sure that you're big enough for what you've got to do. That's the difficulty.”

“You promised, Dixie.” He was still absurdly breathless. “You said it was a trade—if I'd stick to you, you'd stick to me!”

“Certainly. But it's during the next eight or ten hours that you're going to find out what sticking to me, means. You can have me, all right, Jim, but you've got to earn me.”

“I guess I'll earn you, all right.”

“I wonder if you have the courage.”

“By God, for you, Dixie—”

Her hand fell lightly on his; and her voice, very small and calm, broke in with: “Supposing I told you to kill a man. Would you do it?”

She heard, felt, his breath stop. Then he whispered, with one swift glance at the sleeping Connor: “If I say yes, Dixie, will you kiss me? Right now?”

She pressed her lips slightly; then replied: “No. Not yet. And you needn't kill anybody until I tell you to.”

“Is it—is it”—his whisper was huskier—“is it—him, Dixie?” He was staring with less certainty now, at Connor.

“No”—said she slowly—“nobody in particular. But anything may happen to-night, Jim. And we can't falter. Not now.”

She let him press her hand during a brief moment; then made him resume his seat. And from behind lowered lids she watched him.

Once he came back, to ask hoarsely: “You said he was rough with you, Dix. Did he—did you and he—my God, if I thought that Tex had—”

She caught his shoulder and placed a hand over his mouth: held him thus while she said: “If he catches you back here, Jim, he'll kill you. No fear! Now you go back there and show me that you can play cards. You're sitting in the biggest game of your life. Jim Watson.”

He crept back; puzzled, something hurt. There was a sting in her voice. Could it be that the girlish Dixie was as cold-blooded as that? Treating him like a child! Hadn't she any feelings? The question came around and around in his muddy brain, confused with frantic uprushes of jealousy against the big man who slept and snored in the bow.... hadn't she any feelings?.... She was excitingly desirable.

Just as a conquest, now; something to brag about.

It was Dixie who sighted the soldiers, sitting in heated argument on the bank not a hundred yards below a big junk that lay moored to stakes in an eddy. She called sharply to Connor; they pulled straight in beside the other two boats.

Tom Sung came to the water's edge, a rifle (with set bayonet) in his hand. Connor stepped out, holding the boat. The Kid, with a furtive, glance at the big yellow fighter, and the abruptly silent shadowy group on the bank, cautiously got out an automatic pistol and held it beside him on the thwart.

Dixie said sharply, for Connor's ears: “Put up that gun, Jim!”

The Kid obeyed.

She spoke then to Connor direct.

“Tell your man we want that junk,” she said. “Get out these other boats and take it, quick. Then we'll start back up-stream.”

For a moment Connor was nonplussed. The girl's assumption of authority was complete. Even the slow-thinking Tom Sung felt her presence and turned abruptly from himself toward her.

But, though angered, Connor controlled himself. She meant, after all, business. Dixit wasn't a girl to make careless mistakes. She knew, none better, what any success, little or big, might be worth in risks run. So, speaking sharply, he gave his orders to Tom.

Quietly the twenty or more outlaw soldiers came down to the boats and pushed off. Rowing and paddling they crept up on the junk. A drowsy watchman peeped over at the rail, forward.

Then they were alongside. Catching at the mooring poles, the soldiers stepped out on the wide sponson that curved down, amidships, nearly to the water-line. Quickly, rifles slung on backs but revolvers at their girdles and knives in their teeth, they went up the ropes hand over hand, their bare feet dinging monkeylike to the smooth side.

There were cries aboard now, and a confusion of running feet. The first soldier to get a leg over the rail came tumbling back with a split skull, bounding off the sponson into the water and sinking as he drifted away.

Connor and the Kid caught together at the sponson. Connor stepped out; and calling on a belated soldier to give him a back, climbed laboriously, puffing but determined, up over the rail, pausing at the top only to call back for the Kid to follow.

But that worthy hesitated, crouching, clutching at the boat painter. “I've got to hold the boat here!” he shouted back; but Connor had disappeared.

There was much noise up there now—shouts, groans, appalling screeches, shots, and that insistent pattering of feet.

Dixie, watching critically the crouching figure on the sponson—for the Kid was shivering and making little sounds, obviously caught in the acute physical distress into which extreme sudden fear will at times plunge a man—called abruptly: “Jim—look up!”

A nearly naked Chinese was lowering himself in a deliberate gingerly manner down a moving rope nearly overhead.

“Kill him, Jim!” Dixie added.

Singling out her clear voice from the tumult, the yellow man looked fearfully down.

The Kid, at the same moment, looked up; then, fumbling in a curiously absent way for his pistol, glanced back at Dixie.

“I'll hold the boat,” said she. “Go on—kill him!” She sat quietly, one thin arm reached out to the nearest mooring pole, looking steadily up.

The Kid, nerving himself, suddenly burst into a storm of wild oaths and shot three times into the body above him. At the first shot the man slipped down a little way.

“Push him away!” Dixie cried sharply. “I don't want him falling into the boat!”

He was shooting again; and then with an effort diverted the falling body.

Dixie got up, and stood steadying herself in the gently rocking boat; and the Kid—quit; out of breath now, and muttering, as he fondled the hot pistol, “Well, I did it, didn't I? I did what you said!”—found in her eyes, shining through the dusk of early dawn, a bright white light that was, to him, disconcerting and yet profoundly thrilling. He shivered again as he felt the spell of her strange genius. What a woman, he was thinking again, but wildly, madly, now, to conquer.

And she was saying, “I guess your nerve's all right.”

Other shining yellow bodies were tumbling over the side and floating away.

“Help me up there, Jim!” she commanded. “Never mind tying the boat—let it go! It's only a giveaway. Quick—give me a hand!”

She was beside him on the sponson. He clasped her in his arms; but before he could kiss her she slapped him sharply. “Keep your head!” she commanded. “Put me up there!”

He lifted her high; until she could kneel, then stand, on his shoulder. She went over the rail as lightly as a boy. She found the soldiers in small groups cornering one or another of the crew, torturing and hacking at them with bayonets and knives, and during a brief moment looked on with a curious keen interest. The master, or laopan, crouched, whimpering, on the poop.... She saw Connor standing by the mast, just above the well, amidships and forward, where were huddled the survivors among the crew (their number surprisingly large); Connor was panting, revolver in hand, and scowling about him.

Dixie stepped to his side.

“You've got to save enough of this crew to work the boat up the river, Tex,” she remarked.

“I'm saving enough of 'em,” he replied gruffly. “We've only killed a dozen or so. There was more'n a hundred.”

The heavily evil-looking Tom Sung reluctantly detached himself from one of the groups and came over, wiping his bayonet casually on his sleeve. Mr. Connor roughly ordered to gather his men together and make ready to get under way. To the Kid, who came awkwardly over the rail just then, Connor gave merely a glance. Then to Dixie, he said:

“Come up here!”

He led the way up the steps with the carven hand rail to the poop; gave the laopan a careless kick; stepped around the steersman's covered pit and out astern on the high projecting gallery.

“Now,” he said, fixing his one eye on Her, “where's this place?”

She turned away to the pots of flowers that stood closely spaced just within the elaborate woodwork of the railing. There were chrysanthemums, white, yellow and deep Indian red; highly cultivated double dahlias; red lotus blossoms; and tuberoses that filled the fresh morning air with their heavy perfume. “Well?” Connor added explosively.

“I said I'd tell you by sunrise, Tex,” she said, coolly pleasant; and hummed, very softly, a music-hall tune, bending over a spreading lotus blossom with every appearance of ingenuous girlish interest. After a moment, she went on, “The thing now is to get this junk up the river as fast as it will go.”

“Where to?” He was controlling his voice, but his face, usually expressionless, was brutally clouded...."Push me just a little farther, Dix, and you'll go overboard. And there won't be any flowers at the funeral. By God, I'm not sure I wouldn't enjoy it. You got me into this business! Now if you—”

“Better control yourself, Tex,” said she; straightening up before him. “I may have got you in, but it's a real job now. You've got to go through. And you're going to need me. The place is a few miles this side of a town called Huang Chau, on the north hank.”

“Beyond Hankow?”

“No, below. It's only a matter of hours getting up there, if you'll just get this junk started.”

“How'll we know it when we get there?”

“All we've got to do is ask a native, anywhere along the bank, where Kang Yu lives—his old home.”

“Who's he?”

“The viceroy of Nanking. Why don't you use that eye of yours once in a while, Tex—look around you a little?”

Slowly his mind, so quick at the vicious games of his own race, picked up and related the facts. His face relaxed, as he thought, into the familiar wooden expression.

“You're sure the stones are there?” he asked, quietly now.

She nodded; hummed again; caressed the flowers.

“All right, Dix,” he said then, as he turned to go forward, “that sounds square enough. I guess I can handle it all right. And I'll see that you get your share all hunky dory.”

“What are you figuring my share to be?” she asked, glancing casually up from a lotus blossom.

“Oh,” he cried without hesitation, almost playfully, “you and I aren't going to have any trouble about that.”

He went then; and she lingered among the flowers.

From beyond the long deck house came shouts and wailing. The great sweeps were got overside. The mooring poles were hoisted out and lashed along the sponsons. The clumsy craft swung out into the river and moved slowly forward.

At the sound of a hasty light step Dixie looked up into the haggard gray face of the Kid.

“What was it?” he whispered, glancing fearfully behind him. “Wha'd he say to you?”

She dropped her eyes; turned away.

“Quick! Tell me, or by God, I'll—”

She threw up a frail white hand.

“Not now, Jim!”

“When?”

“He'll have to sleep. There's work ahead.”

“If you think I can sleep—”

“I can't either, Jim. It's dreadful. But I'm going to tell you everything. You have a right to know. Wait till we're past the steamer. We'd better get below now anyhow. We mustn't be seen. If we aren't, they'll never suspect this junk. Then make sure he's asleep and come up here. I'll be waiting.”

The Kid brought Dixie's breakfast of rice and eggs and tea to the gallery.

“The cook was only wounded a little,” he explained. “Tom's got him working now.”

Dixie was reclining on a Canton chair of green rushes over a bamboo frame, her head resting languidly near the tuberoses. Now and again she drew in deeply the rich odor. And beyond the fringe of flowers and the carven railing she could see the river. Junks moved slowly by, sliding down with the current—somber seagoing craft out of Tientsin and Cheefoo and Swatow and even Canton. By a village were clustered open sampans, and slipper-boats with their coverings of arched matting. The small craft of the fishermen with suspended nets or with roosting, crowding cormorants clustered here and there along the channel-way. Everywhere farmers and their coolies were at work in the fields. A family—father, mother, boys and girls—worked tirelessly with their feet a large irrigating wheel at the water's edge.

The Kid seated himself on the deck and mournfully looked on while she ate. Perversely she delayed her narrative, playing with time and life. In her oblique way she was happy, exercising her gift for gambling on a scale new in her experience. Indeed, for the thrill she now experienced, Dixie Carmichael would have paid almost any price. Life itself—the mere existing—-she held almost as cheaply as the Chinese. Deliberately, with nerves steady as steel instruments, she finished her simple breakfast and then put the bowls aside on the deck.

Lying back, averting her face, gazing off down the river, she began the narrative that she had framed within the hour. Her manner, calm at first, soon offered evidences of deeply suppressed emotion. Her voice exhibited the first unsteadiness the Kid had ever heard in it. She drew out an embroidered handkerchief from the pocket of her blouse and pressed it once or twice to her eyes, as, with an air of dogged determination, she talked on.

The narrative itself dealt with her girlhood near San Francisco, her chance meeting with Tex Connor, then a well-known character on the western coast of America, her girlish infatuation with him, and an elopement that she had supposed would end in marriage. Instead she found her life ruined. Connor had beaten her, degraded her, driven her into vice. She ran away from him; reached the China Coast; settled down with every intent to become what she termed, in his and her language, a square gambler.

“When I took up with you a little last year, Jim, it seemed to me that at last I'd found a man I could tie to. You never knew my real feelings. I'm not the kind that tells much or shows much. I guess perhaps my life's been too hard. But—oh, Jim!—well, you're, seeing the real girl now. I'm pretty well beaten down, Jim.... You're getting the truth from me at last. I've got to tell it—all of it—for your own sake. You're in worse trouble than you know, right now. The cards are stacked against you, Jim. Your life even”—her voice broke; but she got it under control—“I'm going to save you if I can.”

Moodily he watched her.

“If it was anybody but Tex! He's merciless. He's strong. He never forgets.... Listen, Jim! Tex came clear from London to find me. And he found out about—us—you and me. That I was growing fond of you. He never forgets and he never forgives. Oh. Jim, can't you see it! Can't you see that that's why he took you on—so he could watch you, keep you away from me? Can't you see what a game I've had to play? God, if you'd heard what he said to me back here this very morning—Oh, it's too awful! I can't tell you! He's so determined! He gets his way, Jim—Tex gets his way!.... Oh, what can I do!”

“No, wait—I've got to tell you the whole thing. You said he was planning to cross me. He'll do that, of course. I don't think I care much about that. But you, Jim—oh, you poor innocent boy! If you could only see! You'll never get your hands on one of the viceroy's jewels.”

She turned her face toward him. Her eyes now were swollen and wet with tears.

Jim, gray of face, held in his two hands a Chinese knife, balancing it. There were stains on the blade. He must have picked it up, she reflected, here on the junk. For it wouldn't be like him to carry such a weapon. It seemed to her then that he was holding his breath. She saw him moisten his blue lips with the tip of an ashen tongue. He was trying to speak. At least his lips parted again. She waited. When the voice did finally come, it was so hoarse that he had evident difficulty in making it intelligible.

“Tex may be strong—but if you think I'm afraid—”

“Oh, Jim.... no, I don't mean that! Not that! Oh, I don't know what I'm saying-! It's only when I think how happy you and I might be—think of it! really rich! able to go and live decently somewhere, like regular folks!”

Silently, with surprising stealthy swiftness, he got to his feet. His right hand, with the knife, busied itself in a side pocket of his coat.

“Say the word, Dixie”—his face was contorted with the muscular effort necessary to produce this small sound—“say the word, and I'll kill him.”

“Oh, no, Jim!” she covered her face with her thin hands, and sobbed, very low. “Oh God, what can we do? Isn't there some other way?”

“Say the word,” he whispered.

“Would it be”—she broke down again—“would it be—where a man's a devil, where he's threatened—wouldn't it be like defending ourselves?”

“Say the word!”

“Oh, Jim—-God forgive me!.... Yes!”

Her lips barely framed the word. But he read it. She watched him as he stepped around the huge coils of tracking rope on the roof of the steersman's pit; watched until he dropped softly down and disappeared.

Then, lying back, very still, she listened. But the oarsmen were chanting up forward, the laopan shouting; nearer, the steersman was singing an apparently endless falsetto narrative (as if there had never been bloodshed). The minutes slowly passed. She drew in the sweet exhalation of the tuberoses.... still no unusual sound. She herself exhibited no sign of excitement beyond the hint of a cryptic smile and the white light in her eyes.... Her shopping bag lay on her lap. Opening it, she looked at the bracelet watch, that nestled close to a small triangular bottle of green corrosive sublimate tablets.... The gentle wash of the current against the hull gave out a soothing sound. The slowly rising sun beat warmly down, and the polished deck radiated the heat. A sensation of drowsiness was stealing over her. For a short while she fought it off; but then, deciding that no anxiety on her part could be of value, she yielded, closed the bag on her lap, and drifted into slumber.

It was pleasantly warmer still. She felt her eyes about to open—slowly—on a presence. This languor was delicious. As an almost ascetic epicure in sensations she rested a moment longer in it, thinking dreamily of priceless gems heaped in her hollowed hands; of luxurious idleness in some exotic port—Singapore, or Penang (she had loved the tropical splendor of Penang), or in Burmah or India—Rangoon say, or even Lucknow, Lahore and Simla. They would know less about her there. And with the means to operate on a larger scale she should be able to add enormously to her wealth. She decided to dress and act differently; make a radical change in her methods.

Her lips parted. The presence before her—coatless, little cap pushed back off the low forehead—was Connor. He had pushed aside a flower pot to make a seat on the rail.

She closed her eyes again. He still wore the gray flannels and the white shoes with the rubber soles-It would be the shoes that had enabled him to approach without awakening her. He was smoking a cigar And the face was wooden again—save for his eye—He at stared oddly at her. And she thought his breathing somewhat short, just at first.

She opened her eyes again.

“I've had a good nap,” she said.

He smoked, and stared.

“Where's Jim?” she asked then; quite casually: raising herself on an elbow.

He made no reply; smoked on, still a thought breathless, fixing her with his eyes.

“He brought me some breakfast, just before I fell asleep.... What time is it?”

For what seemed a long space he did not even answer this; merely smoked and stared. She had never, sensitively keen as were her perceptions, felt so curious a hostility in Connor. She had hitherto supposed that she understood him, short as had been their actual acquaintance—-her narrative of a past with him in America, as related to Jim, was false—but the man before her now, sitting all but motionless on the railing, smoking with an odd rapid intensity, holding that cold eye on her, was wholly alien.

Finally he replied: “It's afternoon.”

“No!” She sat up. “Have we been going right along?”

“Right along.”

She stood erect; covered a yawn; then with her thin hands smoothed down the wrinkled blue skirt about her hips.

“I look like the devil,” she remarked. The thin hands went to her hair. “You haven't noticed any sort of a mirror in the cabin, have you, Tex?”

He did not reply.

Faintly through the still air came a faint sound—a boom—boom-bom.

“What's that?” she asked sharply.

“Fighting around Hankow.”

“We're not way up there?” She stepped to the side and looked out ahead. “There's a city!”

“Tom says it's Huang Chau.”

“Hello! We're there!”

He inclined his head.

“What are you going to do?”

“Tie up here.”

She heard now other and more confused sounds. The junk was slowing down; working in toward the yellow shallows.

“Now listen!” said he. She glanced at him, then away, apparently considering the quiet landscape; alien he was indeed, and hostile, his manner that of an inarticulate man struggling with a set speech.... “Listen! You're smart enough. But I want you to understand I don't trust you.''

“Don't you, Tex?”

“When I go ashore, you're to stay here—right here on this deck—where you are now.”

“What's the big idea, Tex?”

“There'll be men to see that you do stay here. I want you to get this straight.”

“Of course,” said she musingly, “you won't be able to rob me outright. You'll have to give me enough of a share to keep me quiet afterward.”

He said nothing.

“But what's to prevent the crew from getting away with the junk. I'm not very keen about being carried off that way.”

“You needn't worry. I'm taking the master along with me.”

He stood then; looked meaningly at her; then went forward. She noted that his two hip pockets bulged.

Slowly the long narrow craft was worked in toward the land. Trackers sculled ashore in sampans and made the great hawsers fast to stakes. Then the crew, with a deal of shouting and many casual blows, were assembled in the long well forward of the mast, where they huddled abjectly.

Keeping around the steersman's house, Dixie contrived to take in much of the scene. There was quarreling among the soldiers. Tom Sung towered over them, shouting rough orders. The two men that were told off (she judged to guard her and the junk) appeared to be objecting to their part in the affair. Obviously there would be small loot here.

Connor came back over the deck house; stood angrily over her. She sensed the mounting brutality in him. For that matter, his sort and their ways with women were familiar enough to her. She had learned to take brutal men for granted. But it had not occurred to her that Connor would strike her. However, he did. Knocked her to her knees; then to her face; even kicked her as she lay on the deck. He was suddenly loud, wild.

“None o' this peeking around!” he cried. “Keep your eyes where they belong!” And left her there.

After a little she was able to creep to the rail and peer out through the flowers. Frightened members of the crew were sculling the sampans back and forth, until at length the whole party, every man except the laopan armed, fully assembled, set off inland.

Beyond an unpleasant headache she felt no injury. She sat for a little while; then again looked forward. The two guards were on the deck house, talking excitedly together. While she watched they climbed down, shouted at the huddled crew, fired a careless shot or two into the mass of them that brought down at least one. At length two of the crew went over the side, followed by the soldiers. A moment later the sampan appeared moving toward the shore, the two soldiers loudly urging on the oarsmen.

Dixie, swiftly then, rearranging her disordered hair as she walked, went down into the cabin.

A corridor extended along one side from the laopans quarters under the steersman's house—sounds of stifled weeping came from there, apparently a woman or a girl—forward to the open space amidships. The rooms all gave on this corridor, the doorways hung with curtains of blue cotton cloth. Into one and another of these rooms she looked. There was bentwood furniture and bedding in each—-the latter tossed about. On the walls hung neat ideographic mottoes. The grillwork about the windows and over the doors was of a uniform and quaint design.

Connor had taken for himself the rear room. There she found, beneath the window a heap of matting and bedding. Thoughtfully, deliberately, she lifted it off, piece by piece, exposing first a foot and leg, then a bony hand, finally the entire figure of what had been Jim Watson, known, of recent years, along Soochow Road and Bubbling Well Road as the Manila Kid. His clothing was slashed and torn in many places. About his middle, and about his head, were wide pools of blood that during a number of hours, evidently, had been drying into the boards of the deck. The neck, she observed, on closer examination, had been cut through nearly to the vertebrae.

During a swift moment she considered the grew-some problem; then carefully replaced the matting and bedding.

She went forward then to the end of the corridor; paused to look in her shopping bag, open the triangular bottle and drop a few of the green pills into the pocket of her middy blouse, under her handkerchief; closed the bag and stepped out on the low midships deck.

The sampan had just returned to the junk. The two soldiers were walking; rapidly inland after Connor's party. She let herself quickly over the side; stepped into the sampan; waved toward the shore. Meekly the cowed oarsmen obeyed the pantomime order.

She stepped out on the bank, very slim, almost pretty; tossed a Chinese Mexican dollar into the boat, watched, with a faint, reflective smile, the two primitive creatures as they fought over it; then walked briskly, not without a trace of native elegance in her carriage, after the soldiers, lightly swinging her shopping bag.