Kitabı oku: «The Devourers», sayfa 15

XIII

Fräulein Müller came to town three times a week and taught Anne-Marie arithmetic and geography. Of arithmetic Anne-Marie understood little; of geography no word. She pointed vaguely with a ruler at the map, and said: "Skagerrack and Kattegat," which were the words whose sounds pleased her most.

"The child is not at all a genius," said Fräulein Müller, much depressed.

One day George and Peggy came to visit them at the boarding-house. And with them they brought Mr. Markowski and his violin.

In the drawing-room after tea Nancy asked the shy and greasy-looking Hungarian to play: and the fiddle was taken tenderly out of its plush-lined case. Markowski was young and shabby, but his violin was old and valuable. Markowski had a dirty handkerchief, but the fiddle had a clean, soft white silk one. Markowski placed a small black velvet cushion on his greasy coat-collar, and raised the violin to it; he adjusted his chin over it, raised his bow, and shut his eyes. Then Markowski was a god.

Do you know the hurrying anguish of Grieg's F dur Sonata? Do you know the spluttering shrieks of laughter of Bazzini's "Ronde des Lutins"? The sobbing of the unwritten Tzigane songs? The pattering of wing-like feet in Ries's "Perpetuum Mobile?"

Little Anne-Marie stood in the middle of the room motionless, pale as linen, as if the music had taken life from her and turned her into a white statuette. Ah, here was the little neoteric statue that Nancy had tried to fix! The child's eyes were vague and fluid, like blue water spilt beneath her lashes; her colourless lips were open.

Nancy watched her. And a strange dull feeling came over her heart, as if someone had laid a heavy stone in it. What was that little figure, blanched, decolorized, transfigured? Was that Anne-Marie? Was that the little silly Anne-Marie, the child that she petted and slapped and put to bed, the child that was so stupid at geography, so brainless at arithmetic?

"Anne-Marie! Anne-Marie! What is it, dear? What are you thinking about?"

Anne-Marie turned wide light eyes on her mother, but her soul was not in them. For the Spirit of Music had descended upon her, and wrapped her round in his fabulous wings—wrapped her, and claimed her, and borne her away on the swell of his sounding wings.

XIV

"Fräulein, I have no more money—not one little brown cent in the wide world," said Nancy, sitting on the lawn of the Gartenhaus, and drinking afternoon tea out of Fräulein's new violet-edged cups.

"So?" said Fräulein. For a long time her lips moved in mental calculation. Then she said: "I could let you have forty-seven dollars."

Nancy put down the cup, and, bending forward, kissed Fräulein's downy cheek.

"Dear angel!" she said; "and then?"

"What is to be done?" said Fräulein, drying her lips on her new fringed serviette, and folding it in a small neat square.

"Mah!" said Nancy, raising her shoulders, swayed back into Italian by the stress of the moment.

"No news from your husband?"

"Bah!" said Nancy, shrugging her shoulders again, and waving her hand from the wrist downwards in a gesture of disdain.

Fräulein sighed, and looked troubled. Then she said:

"You must come and live here, you and Anne-Marie. I will send Elisabeth away—anyhow, she has broken already three lamp-glasses and a plate—and we must live with economy." Fräulein, who had lived with that lean and disagreeable comrade all her life, then coughed and looked practical. "Yes, I shall be glad to get rid of that clumsy girl, Elisabeth."

Nancy put one arm round her neck and kissed her again. Then she said: "I have only one hope."

"What is that?" asked Fräulein.

It was Nancy's turn to cough. She did so, and then said: "There is … there are … some … some people in England who are interested in me—in my writings. I think … they might help … I ought to go over and see them."

"Certainly," said Fräulein, "you must go. And I will keep Anne-Marie here with me. Then she need not interrupt her violin-lessons."

"Yes," said Nancy. "You could keep Anne-Marie...." She sighed deeply. "Of course she must not interrupt her lessons. I suppose you think I ought to go?"

"Of course," said Fräulein, who was practical. "A firm like that won't do anything without seeing you and talking business. But mind, mind they do not cheat! Authoresses are always being cheated."

Nancy smiled. "I shall try not to let them."

"Being English, perhaps they will not. In Berlin–" And here Fräulein repeated a discourse she had made many, many years ago in Wareside when Nancy's first poem had been read aloud. Fräulein remembered that day, and spoke of it now with tearful tenderness. She also believed she remembered bits of the poem:

 
"This morning in the garden
I caught the little birds;
This morning in the orchard
I picked the little words."
 

"What!" said Nancy. "Why did I 'pick the little words'?"

"Perhaps it was 'plucked,'" said Fräulein, looking vague.

 
"This morning in the garden
I caught the little words;
This morning in the orchard
I plucked … or picked the little birds–"
 

—"or caught them," continued Fräulein, much moved.

"I cannot say that that sounds very beautiful," said Nancy.

"Oh, but it was. It may have been a little different. But it was lovely. And you were a little tiny thing, like Anne-Marie!"

"Listen to Anne-Marie," said Nancy.

Anne-Marie had insisted upon bringing her violin to the Gartenhaus, and was now practising on it in the dining-room. The windows were open. She was playing a little cradle-song very softly, very lightly, in perfect tune.

"That is indeed a Wonderchild," said Fräulein.

Markowski had called her a Wonderchild directly. When he had seen her weeping convulsively after he had played, he had exclaimed: "This is a Wonderchild. I will teach her to play the fiddle."

And sure enough he had come to the house on the following day, with a little old half-sized fiddle, like a shabby reproduction of the dead Guarnerius, and had given Anne-Marie her first lesson. The lesson had been long, and Anne-Marie had emerged from it with feverish eyes and hot cheeks, and with anger in her heart. For the Bird, or the Fairy, or the Sorcerer, or the Witch that made music in other violins, did not seem to be inside the little shabby fiddle Markowski had brought her.

"Be gentle, be gentle! and do what I say," said Markowski, with his stringy black hair falling over his vehement eyes. "One day the Birds and the Witches will be in it, and they will sing to you. Now, practise scale of C."

And Anne-Marie had practised scale of C—to Nancy's amazement, for she thought that in one lesson no one could have learnt so much. In ten lessons Anne-Marie had learnt fifteen scales and a cradle-song. In two months she had learnt what other children learn in two years. So said Markowski, who got more and more excited, and gave longer and longer lessons, and came every day instead of twice a week.

"What do I owe you?" Nancy asked him. "I can't keep count of the lessons. You seem to be always coming."

"Never mind! never mind!" said Markowski, waving excited, unwashed hands. And as he had heard about their financial position from George and Peggy, he added, "You will pay me … when she plays you the Bach Chaconne!"

"Very well," said Nancy, who thought that that meant in a week or two. "Just as you please, Herr Markowski."

And then she thought he must be insane, because he was bent with laughter as he packed away his violin.

Fräulein Müller made accounts in a little black book all one day and half one night, and in the morning she went to Lexington Avenue to see Nancy.

"I can give you eighty dollars. Will that pay your journey to England to see the firm of publishers?"

Oh yes, Nancy thought so. And how good of her! And how could Nancy ever thank her?

"Of course, those people will be glad to advance you something at once, even if the manuscript is not quite ready," said Fräulein, who was romantic besides being practical.

"I suppose so," said Nancy.

"See that you have a proper contract. You had better ask a barrister to make it for you." And Nancy promised that she would.

So Fräulein hurried off to the Deutsche Bank, and drew out eighty dollars and a little extra, because Anne-Marie would have to have puddings and good soups while she was with her. The thought of giving puddings to Anne-Marie made her hurriedly take her handkerchief from her pocket and blow her nose.

"One day it shall be sago, one day it shall be rice, and one day it shall be tapioca, with Konfitüre." And Fräulein Müller hurried with her eighty dollars to Nancy.

But then a strange thing happened. Nancy would not go. Day after day passed, and Nancy always had some excuse for not having packed her trunk or taken her berth. Surely it was not so difficult to pack the little things she wanted for a short business journey. Her new navy-blue serge, observed Fräulein, was very good, and the brown straw hat for autumn would do nicely.

"You must dress sensibly in a business-like way to go and see those people," said Fräulein. "It would never do if you went looking like a flimsy fly-away girl."

"No, indeed," said Nancy, smiling with pale lips. That evening she wrote to George. He came up to town at the lunch-hour next day, and asked to see her. She left Anne-Marie at table eating stewed steak, to go and speak to him.

"George," she said, keeping in hers the cool damp hand he held out, "I want money. I want a lot of money."

George slowly withdrew his hand, and pulled at a little beard he had recently and not very successfully grown on his receding chin.

"Then I guess you must have it," he said.

"But I want a great deal. Two or three hundred dollars," said Nancy. "Or four–"

"Stop right there," said George. "Don't go on like that, or I can't follow." And he pulled his beard again.

"Oh, George, how sweet of you! how dear of you!" And she clasped his moist left hand, which he left limply in hers.

"The bother of it is, I don't know how I shall get it," said George. "I'm just thinking that"–

"Oh, don't tell me—please don't tell me!" said Nancy. "I—I'd rather not know! I know you won't steal, or murder anyone, but get it, George! Oh, thank you! thank you so much! Good-bye!"

And Nancy, as she looked out of the window after him, at his cheap hat and his sloping shoulders, and saw him board a cable-car going down-town, felt that she was a vulture and a harpy.

"The Girl in the Letters has demoralized me," she said.

He brought her four hundred dollars on the following Monday, and she wept some pretty little tears over it, and covered her ears with her hands, and dimpled up at him, when he began to tell her how he had got them. She was the Girl in the Letters. She was practising. And with George it answered very well—too well! She had to stop quickly and be herself again. Then he went away.

And she went out and bought dresses. She bought drooping, trailing gowns and flimsy fly-away gowns, and an unbusiness-like hat, and shoes impossible to walk in. She bought Crème des Crèmes for her face, and Crème Simon for her hands, and liquid varnish for her nails, and violet unguent for her hair.

Then she waited for the Unknown's next letter, saying

"Come."

The letter did not arrive. A day passed, and another. And he did not write. A week passed, and another, and he did not write. Nancy sat in the boarding-house with her dresses and her hats and her Crème des Crèmes. The entire four hundred dollars of George, and fifteen dollars out of Fräulein's eighty, were gone.

Nancy sat and looked out of the window, and thought her thoughts. Could she write to the Unknown again? No. Hers had been the last letter. He had not answered it. Should she telegraph? Where to? And to say what? He had gone to Peru. She knew, she felt, he had gone to Peru. The pretty, silly, romantic story was ended—ended as she had wished it to end, without the banal dénouement of their meeting. Better so. Much better so. Nancy was really very glad that things were as they were.

And now what was going to happen to her? She said to herself that she must have been insane to borrow all that money and buy those crazy dresses, those idiotic hats. What should she do? The terror of life came over her, and she wished she were safely away and asleep in the little Nervi cemetery between her father and her mother, cool and in the dark, with quiet upturned face.

Oh yes, she was really exceedingly glad that things were as they were!

Half-way through the third week a telegram was brought to her. It came from Paris.

"Why not dine with me next Thursday at the Grand Hôtel?"

To-day was Thursday.

She cabled back.

"Why not? At eight o'clock.—Nancy."

Oh, the excitement, the packing, the telegraphing to Fräulein, the hurry, the joy, the confusion! The stopping every minute to kiss Anne-Marie; the sitting down suddenly and saying, "Perhaps I ought not to go!" And then, the jumping up again at the thought of the boat that left to-morrow at noon.

Fräulein came to fetch Anne-Marie at ten in the morning. She arrived joyful and agitated, bringing a fox-terrier pup in her arms, a present for Anne-Marie, to prevent her crying.

"Why should I cry?" said Anne-Marie, with the hardness of tender years.

"Why, indeed!" said Nancy, buttoning Anne-Marie's coat, while quick tears fell from her eyes. "Mother will come back very soon—very soon."

"Of course," said Anne-Marie, holding the puppy tightly round the neck, and putting up a shoe to have it buttoned.

"Don't let her catch cold, Fräulein," sobbed Nancy, bending over the shoe; and when it was fastened, she kissed it.

"No," said Fräulein, beaming. "She shall wear flannel pellipands that I am making for her."

The second shoe was buttoned and kissed. Her hat was put on with the elastic in front of her ears. Her gloves? Yes, in her coat-pocket. Handkerchief? Yes. The mice? Yes; Fräulein had them, and the violin, and the music-roll, and the satchel. The box was already downstairs in the carriage. They were ready.

"Let me carry down the puppy," said Nancy on the landing, with a break in her voice. "Then I can hold your dear little hand."

"Oh no!" said Anne-Marie. "I'll carry the puppy. You can hold on to the bannisters."

So Nancy walked down behind Anne-Marie and the puppy. Fräulein was in front, dreading the moment of leave-taking, and thinking with terror of the possibility of travelling all the way to Staten Island with a loud and tearful Anne-Marie. So she started a new topic of conversation.

"You shall have pudding every day," she said, trying to turn round on the second landing to Anne-Marie, close behind her, and nearly dropping the satchel and the mice, as the violin-case caught in the bannisters. "One day it shall be sago, another day tapioca...."

"I don't like tapioca," said Anne-Marie, walking down the stairs. "I don't like nothing of all that."

They were at the door. By request of Nancy, nobody was there to speak to them. But all the boarders who were in the house were looking at them from behind the drawing-room curtains.

"Then what do you like for dessert?" said Fräulein, going down the stone steps by Anne-Marie's side, while Nancy still followed.

"I like peppermint bullseyes," said Anne-Marie, "and pink jelly." And she added: "Nothing else," while the pimply boy and the maid hoisted her into her carriage. Fräulein got in after her, with the many packages. And the puppy barked at the mice.

"Good-bye, Anne-Marie! Good-bye, darling!" cried Nancy, kissing her with great difficulty through the carriage-window across Fräulein, and the violin, and the mice, that were on Fräulein's lap. "God bless you! God bless you and keep you, my own darling!"

The puppy barked deafeningly. The pimply boy nodded to the cabman, and off they were.

Nancy walked slowly back into the house, and up the stairs, and into the desolate rooms.

XV

Peggy and George accompanied her to the boat, Peggy excited and talkative, George depressed and silent. In his murky down-town office George had felt himself of late more poet than clerk, and now he was all elegy. She was leaving! She was going away with his heart, and she might perhaps never return! She might perhaps never return the four hundred dollars either. They belonged to a friend of George's—a mean and sordid soul. George stifled the unlovely thought, born of the clerk, and surrendered his spirit to the grief of the poet.

Farewell! Farewell! The ship turned its cruel side, and hid the little waving figure from his sight. It throbbed away like a great, unfaithful heart, abandoning the land. Farewell! What were four hundred dollars, belonging to a friend, compared with the torn and quivering heart-strings of a lover?

The ship heaved forward towards the east, rising and sinking as ships rise and sink, carrying Nancy and her dresses, and her hats, and her little pots of cream, to the Unknown. And the nearer they got to him, the more frightened was Nancy. What if she should reach Paris, with the fourteen dollars she still possessed, and he were not there? What if he turned out to be a brute and a beast? What—oh, terrible thought!—if he were to think her not as pretty as he had expected? She was not really pretty. Oh, why had she not the pale sunshiny hair of the American girl opposite her at table? Why not the youth-splashed eyes of the little girl from the West, who was going to Paris to study art? Why not the long, up-curling lashes of her light and starry glance?

Nancy comforted herself by hoping that he himself might be hideous. But if he were? How should she smile at him and talk to him if he were a repugnant, odious monster? Then she reasoned that if he were a monster, he would not have asked her to come. "Why not dine with me on Thursday?" is not the kind of telegram a monster would send. No, he was not a monster.

What would he say to her when they met? Everything depended on the first moment. She pictured it in a thousand different ways. The pictures always began in the same manner. She arrived in Paris; she drove from the Gare du Nord, not to the Grand Hôtel where he was staying, but to the Continental. She engaged a gorgeous suite of rooms. What! with fourteen dollars? Exactly so! What did it matter? It was Rouge or Noir. If Rouge came up, all was well. If Noir—la débâcle! le déluge! Fifty francs more or less made absolutely no difference. A few hours' rest. An hour or two for an elaborate toilette; all the creams used, all the details perfect. Then she would send a messenger, at a quarter to eight, to his hotel:

"Dear Unknown, I am here!"

Then—ah! then, what? He arrives, he enters, he sees her. Then she must say something. Ah! what? What are her first words to be? "How do you do?" Dreadful! No, never that! "Here I am!" Worse, worse still. In French, perhaps? "Me voilà!" Ridiculous! No; she will say nothing. He must speak first.

Then she imagines his opening phrases. After a long silence his voice, deep and trembling with emotion: "Yes, you are the Woman of my Dreams!" That would be very nice. Or, then: "Ah! Eve! Eve! How I have longed for you!" That would strike the right note at once. Or, then, with both hands outstretched: "So this is Nancy!" That would be rather nice. But perhaps he will say something more original: "Why did you not tell me you had a dimple in your chin?"

Ah, how long Nancy lay awake thinking of those First Words! Nancy tossed in her little berth, and turned her pillow's freshest side to her hot cheek; and she palpitated and trembled, smiled and feared, repented and defied, until the huge boat creaked against the landing stage of the Havre dock.

She arrived at the Gare du Nord at three o'clock. She drove to the Continental, and engaged a suite of rooms that cost eighty francs a day: a sitting-room, all tender greens and delicate greys, looking as if it were seen through water, and adjoining it a gorgeous scarlet bedroom, with a dozen mirrors a-shine, all deferentially awaiting the Elaborate Toilette.

Sleep was out of the question. By four o'clock the note that was to be sent at half-past seven was written, and Nancy began her elaborate toilette. She thought of ordering the coiffeur, but she remembered that coiffeurs had always dressed her hair in wonderful twists and coils and rolls, until her head looked like a cake to which her face did not in any way belong. So she did her hair à la Carmen, parted on one side. It seemed the style of hair-dress that the Girl in the Letters would adopt. But when it was done it looked startling and impertinent. So she unpinned it again and decided in favour of a simple, unaffected coiffure. She parted her hair in the middle, plaited it, and pinned it round her head. It was unaffected and simple. She looked like the youngest of the two Swedish girls in the boarding-house. She did not look at all like the Girl in the Letters. So once more she unpinned it, and did it à la pierrot—a huge puff in the middle, waving down over her forehead, and two huge puffs, one on each side. It looked pretty and unladylike.

By this time it was six o'clock. The creams! First a little cold cream; then Crème Impératrice; then—she remembered the directions given her by the person in the shop perfectly—a tiny amount of Leichner's rouge, mixed with a little Crème des Crèmes in the palm of the hand, gently rubbed into the cheeks and chin; then powder—rose-coloured and Rachel. Now a soupçon of rouge on the lobes of the ears and in the nostrils. This, the person in the shop said, was very important. Then the eyebrows brushed with an atom of mascaro, a touch of Leichner on the lips, an idea of shadow round the eyes—and behold!

Nancy beheld. Her face looked mauve, and her nostrils suggested a feverish cold. Her eyes looked large, and tired, and intense, like the eyes of the prairie chickens at Monte Carlo.

Seven o'clock! She had forgotten her nails! For twenty minutes she painted her nails with the pink varnish, which was sticky, and, once on, would not wash off. Her fingers looked as if she had dipped them in blood.

Half-past seven! She must send the note. She rang the bell, and a waiter came. He had been a nice, well-behaved German waiter, as he had shown her respectfully to her expensive rooms. When he saw her as she now appeared—she had hastily slipped into the lightest of the three trailing dresses—the waiter stared; he stared rudely, with raised eyebrows, at her, and took the note from her hand.

He read the address, nodded, and said: "Jawohl! All right. C'est bon!" And then he smiled. He smiled—at her!—and went down the passage whistling softly.

Nancy shut her door. She took off the trailing dress, and went to her bathroom. She turned on the hot water and washed her face. She washed off the shades and soupçons, the crèmes and the mascaro from her eyebrows and her chin, her ears and her nostrils. Then she pinned her hair loosely on the top of her head, as she always did, and put on the darkest of the three trailing gowns. But her nails she scrubbed in vain. They remained aggressively rose-coloured, and Nancy blushed hotly every time she saw them. She decided to put her hat and gloves on. She did so. Then she sat down in her sitting-room and waited. She waited fifteen minutes.

Then somebody knocked.

Nancy started to her feet as if she had been shot. With beating heart she ran back into the bedroom and shut the door after her. No, it was not quite shut; it swung lightly ajar, and Nancy left it so. She heard the knock repeated more loudly at the outer door; she heard the door open, and someone enter. Then the door closed, and steps—the waiter's steps—went back along the hall.

Somebody was in that room. Somebody! A man! A man whom she had never seen. A man to whom she had written forty or fifty letters, whom she had called "mon ami" and "mes amours," "Prince Charming," and "my unknown lover"!

Nancy stood motionless, petrified with shame, her face hidden in her white-gloved hands. She would never go in—never! Not if she had to stand here for years! She could not face that silent man next door.

The situation was becoming ridiculous. The silence was tense in both rooms. Ah, when three thousand miles had separated them, how near she had felt to him! And now, with a few feet of carpet and an open door between them, he was far away—incommensurably far away! A stranger, an intruder, an enemy!

Utter silence. Was he there? Yes. Nancy knew he was there, waiting.

Suddenly Nancy was frightened. The one idea possessed her to get away from that unseen, silent man. She would slip through the bathroom, and out into the passage and away! She took a step forward. Her trailing dress rustled. Her high-heeled boots creaked. And in the next room the man coughed.

Nancy stood still again, transfixed—turned to stone.

Another long silence, ludicrous, untenable. Then in the next room the First Words were spoken. He spoke them in a calm and well-bred voice.

"Our dinner will be cold."

Nancy laughed suddenly, softly, convulsively. Her voice was treble and sweet as she replied:

"What have you ordered?"

The man in the next room said: "Fillet of sole."

"Fried?" asked Nancy earnestly; and, knowing that unless she slid in on that fillet of sole she would never do so, she passed quickly under the draped portière and entered the room.

They looked each other in the face. She saw a large and stalwart figure, a hard mouth, and a strong, curved nose in a sunburnt face, two chilly blue eyes under a powerful brow, and waving grey hair. He looked down at her, and was satisfied. His cool blue gaze took her in from the top of her large black feathered hat to the tips of her Louis XV. shoes.

"Come," he said, offering his arm. And they went out together.

The dinner was not cold. Nancy hardly spoke at all. She was nervous and charming. She sipped Liebfraunmilch, and dimpled and rippled while he told her that he had mines in Peru, and that he had been away from civilization for twenty years.

"I went down to the mines when I was twenty, and came back when I was forty. That is four years ago. I have been fighting my way ever since, trying to keep clear of the wrong woman. I am afraid of women."

"So am I," said Nancy, which was not true.

He laughed, and said: "And of what else?"

"Spiders," said Nancy, with her head on one side.

"And what else?"

"Lions," said Nancy.

"And what else?"

"Thunderstorms." And, as he seemed to be waiting, she added: "And of you, of course."

He did not believe it. But she was.

After dinner he took her to the Folies Bergères and then to the Boîte à Fursy; and he watched her narrowly, and was glad that she did not laugh. Then he took her back to the hotel. They went up together in the lift, and along the red-carpeted, boot-adorned corridor to her green and grey salon. He did not ask permission, but walked in and sat down—large and long—in the small brocaded armchair.

"Are you tired?" he said.

Nancy said, "No," and remained standing.

He said, "Sit down," and she obeyed him.

He sat staring before him for a while, with his underlip pushed up under his upper-lip, making his straight, short-cut moustache stand out. He was a strong, large, ugly man. Nancy suddenly remembered that she had called him "toi," and said, "adieu, mes amours" to him in her letters, and she felt faint with shame. He made a little noise, something between a cough and a growl, and looked up at her.

"What are you thinking?" he said.

She laughed. "I am thinking that I called you Prince Charming, whereas you really are the Ogre."

"Yes," he said, and stared at her a long time. Then he got up suddenly and put out his large hand. "Good-night, Miss Brown," he said. He took his hat and stick, and went out, shutting the door decidedly behind him.

The next morning at half-past eleven he came; he had a small bunch of lilies of the valley in his hand.

"Will you invite me to lunch?" he said.

Yes, Nancy would be very pleased. She thought of the twenty-two francs in her purse; but nothing mattered.

They lunched in the dining-room, and he was very silent. Nancy spoke of music, but he did not respond.

"Do you sing?" she asked at last.

He looked up at her like an offended wild beast. "Do I look as if I could sing?"

"No, you don't," she said. "You look as if you could growl."

He smiled slightly under his clipped moustache, and did not answer. Nancy gave up all attempt at conversation. Her heart beat fast. Things were going wrong. He was tired of her already. He looked bored—well, no, not bored, but utterly indifferent and hard, as if he were alone. After their coffee he got up—every time he rose Nancy wondered anew at his breadth and length—and led the way out. Nancy trotted after him with short steps. He went into the lounge and took a seat near a table in the window, pushing a chair forward for Nancy.

"May I smoke?" he said, taking a large cigar-case from his pocket.

Nancy nodded. He chose his cigar carefully, clipped the end off, and lit it. Nancy could not think of a word to say. All her pretty, frivolous conversation, all the bright remarks and witty repartee, wavered away from her mind. She had not prepared herself for monologues.

After the first puff he said: "You don't smoke, do you?"

"Oh no!" said Nancy.

As soon as she had said it a wave of crimson flooded her face. She remembered writing that she smoked Russian cigarettes perfumed with heliotrope. He had not believed her. How could she have written such an idiotic thing? And suddenly she realized that she was not the Girl in her Letters at all, and that he must be bored and disappointed. But no more was he the Man of his Letters; at least, she had imagined him quite different, with fair hair and droopy grey eyes, and a poet's soul. Then she remembered that he had never spoken about himself in his letters at all.

At this point he looked up and said: "I like a woman who can keep quiet. You have not spoken for half an hour." And she laughed, and was glad.

When he had finished his cigar, he said: "I hope you have not left any valuables in your room. It is not safe."

"Oh no," said Nancy; "I haven't."

"Have you given them to the office?"

"No," said Nancy—"no;" and suddenly she remembered that she had told him in her letters that she wore jewels all over her.