sound of her own voice, moved twice round the cavern nervously, and then
dropped again into her old position.

As they carried him away he had laughed at her--like a hound that he
was; he who had praised her for her spirit, and incited her revenge
against others; he who had taught her to strike when she was insulted;
and it was only fit he should reap what he had sown. She was what he,
what other men, had made her. And what was she now? What had she been
once?

She tried to recall her childhood: the man and woman who might have
been her father and mother; who fought and wrangled over her precocious
little life; abused or caressed her as she sided with either; and then
left her with a circus troupe, where she first tasted the power of her
courage, her beauty, and her recklessness. She remembered those flashes
of triumph that left a fever in her veins--a fever that when it failed
must be stimulated by dissipation, by anything, by everything that would
keep her name a wonder in men's mouths, an envious fear to women. She
recalled her transfer to the strolling players; her cheap pleasures, and
cheaper rivalries and hatred--but always Teresa! the daring Teresa! the
reckless Teresa! audacious as a woman, invincible as a boy; dancing,
flirting, fencing, shooting, swearing, drinking, smoking, fighting
Teresa! "Oh, yes; she had been loved, perhaps--who knows?--but always
feared. Why should she change now? Ha, he should see."

She had lashed herself in a frenzy, as was her wont, with gestures,
ejaculations, oaths, adjurations, and passionate apostrophes, but with
this strange and unexpected result. Heretofore she had always been
sustained and kept up by an audience of some kind or quality, if only
perhaps a humble companion; there had always been some one she could