Page:Achmed Abdullah--Wings.djvu/152

136 head, her short, delicately curved nose, her lips which were crimson like a fresh sword wound, her eyes which spoke of wondrous promises—and lied damnably.

Her life had been melodramatic—from the man's angle, be it understood, and not from her own since, sublimely evil, she was beyond the moralizing sense of bad and, of course, good.

There had been death in the trail of her shimmering gowns, suicide, ruin, the slime of the divorce courts, disgrace to more than one.

But she had never cared a whit.

She was always petting her own hard thoughts, puncturing the lives of strangers—who never remained strangers for long—with the dagger point of her personality, her greed, her evil; and men kept on fluttering around the red, burning candle which was her life, like silly willow flies.

Then more deaths, Requiems bought and paid for, and all that sort of thing.

Quite melodramatic. Incredibly, garishly so.

But—what will you?

It isn't always the woman who pays, stage and pulpit to the contrary. And—if she does pay—it's usually the man who endorses the note.