Kitabı oku: «A Woman's Will», sayfa 2
Von Ibn looked at his watch.
“Yes,” he said, “we must; déjeuner is there now.”
So they turned down into the town, taking another of the steep, little streets, so as to vary the scenery of their route. After a little he spoke again.
“And you are sure that you go Monday?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“To Zurich, and then to where?”
“Then to Constance.”
“And then?”
“I do not know where we shall go next.”
He started slightly, and a fresh cloud overspread his face.
“Much pleasure to you,” he said, almost savagely.
She looked up quickly, surprised at his tone, but her answer was spoken pleasantly enough.
“Thank you; and the same to you – all summer long.”
In response he shrugged his shoulders so fiercely as to force her to notice the movement.
“Why do you shrug your shoulders like that?” she demanded.
“I am amused.”
“You don’t look amused.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“I am amused to see that all women are the same; I have that thought just now.”
“Are you in the habit of shrugging your shoulders whenever that thought occurs to you?”
He tossed his head to one side.
“Women are all the same,” he repeated impatiently.
“In what way?”
“They can never tell the truth!”
“What makes you say that?”
“You.”
“I?”
“Yes.”
She felt very nearly vexed.
“Please explain,” she commanded.
He simply gave another shrug.
She decided to keep her temper.
“I might be clever enough to read minds,” she said mildly, “and still be dense about divining shoulders; I confess I miss the point that you’re trying to make with yours.”
He was silent.
She glanced sideways at him and was thoroughly startled at the black humor displayed in his countenance.
“What is really the matter?” she asked, anxiously.
“Nothing.”
She gave him another quick look, and saw that he saw her look and avoided it. Then she was angry at such poor taste displayed in the first hour of a new acquaintance, and almost thought of turning from him and insisting on being left to return to the Schweizerhof alone. But something kept her impulse in check.
“He is a genius,” she thought, “and they are entirely different from other men,” so she waited a moment and then spoke with the utmost earnestness.
“Please tell me what it all means, monsieur; why are you like this?”
“Because,” – he cried with a sudden passionate outburst of feeling, – “because you have lied to me!”
“Monsieur!” she exclaimed, in a shocked voice.
“You have done that,” he cried; “you have lift your eyes to heaven and swear that you were not interested in him, and then – ” he stopped, and put his hands to either side of his collar as if it strangled him.
She grew pale at the sight of his emotion.
“Is it that man still?” she asked.
“But naturally it is that man still! Je ne me fâche jamais sans raison.”
“But what is there new to worry about him?”
She dared not contemplate smiling, instead she felt that the Englishman was rapidly becoming the centre of a prospective tragedy.
Von Ibn scowled until his black brows formed a terrible V just over his eyes.
“You do expect to see him in Zurich,” he declared.
“But I told you that I didn’t.”
He laughed harshly.
“I know; but you betrayed yourself so nicely.”
“How?”
“Just now, when I say where do you go from Constance, you quite forget your part, and you say, ‘I do not know where we shall go next.’ Yes, that is what you say, ‘We —we!’”
“And if I did.”
“But of a surety you did; and I must laugh in my interior when I hear your words.”
“Oh,” she exclaimed quickly, “you must not say that you laughed in your interior, it isn’t good English.”
“Where must I laugh within myself?”
“We say, ‘I laughed to myself.’”
He gave another shrug, as if her correction was too petty a matter to rightfully command attention at that crisis.
“This all does seem so foolish,” she said, “the idea of again having an explanation.”
“I do not care for you to explain,” he interrupted.
“Don’t you want to know what I meant?”
“I know quite well what you meant.”
“I meant my maid, she always travels with me.”
He looked his thorough disbelief.
“Very pretty!” he commented.
She glanced at him and wondered why she was not disgusted, but instead her heart swelled with a pity for the unhappiness that overlaid the doubt in his face.
“Just think,” she said softly, “our friendship is so very young, and you are already so very angry.”
“I am not angry; what I feel is justified.”
“Because I call my maid and myself ‘we’!”
He stopped short, and held out his hand.
“Will you say that it is only the maid?”
Then she felt sure that she should be obliged to scream outright, even while she was summoning all her self-control to the rescue.
They were come to an angle where two streets met steeply and started thence on a joint pitch into the centre of the town. She ran her eyes quickly up and down each vista of cobblestones, and, seeing no one that she knew either near or far, put her hand into his.
“Upon my word and honor,” she declared, with all the gravity which the occasion seemed to demand, “I swear that when I leave Constance my maid will be my only – ”
“Assez, assez!” he interrupted, hastily dropping her hand, “it is not need that you swear that. I can see your truth, and I have just think that it may very well come about that I shall chance to be in Constance and wish to take the train as you. It would then be most misfortunate if you have swear alone with your maid. It is better that you swear nothing.”
This kaleidoscopic turn to the conversation quite took Rosina’s breath away, and she remained mute.
“What hotel in Constance do you stop at?” he asked presently.
“The Insel House, of course.”
He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a note-book.
“Perhaps I will want to remember,” he said, as he wrote. Then he put up the book and smiled into her eyes; he had a beautiful smile, warm and winning. “I find that we are very sympathique,” he went on, “that is why I may perhaps come to see you again. People who can enjoy together are not many.”
“Have you enjoyed this morning? I thought you had not at all.”
“But, yes,” he protested gravely, “I enjoy it very much. How could you think otherwise?”
She felt silence to be safest, and made no reply. He too was silent for a little, and then spoke suddenly.
“Oh, because of that Englishman! But that is all over now. We will never speak of him again. Only it is most fortunate that I am not of a jealous temperament, or I might very well have really offended me that you talk so much about him.”
“It is fortunate,” she agreed.
“Yes,” he answered, “for me it was very good.”
They had come to the crossing of the great square, and the sunlight was dazzling and dancing upon the white stones of the bridge and the molten gold of the Vierwaldstattersee. The Promenade was deserted and even its shade was unpleasantly warm.
“Shall I see you this afternoon?” Von Ibn asked as they went leisurely through the heat.
“Perhaps.”
“I wish it was after the déjeuner,” he said, looking out upon the lake and the crest of the mountain beyond.
She wondered if she had better say “Why,” or not, and finally decided to say it. He brought his eyes back from the Rigi and looked at her.
“Because I have the habit of always sleeping after déjeuner,” he explained.
They crossed to the hotel. It was late, and more people were coming down in the lifts than going up.
“Are you tired?” he asked.
“Yes, I think that I am – a little.”
“I advise you to sleep too,” he said gravely.
“I always do.”
“So,” he cried triumphantly, “you see I say the truth when I say that we are very sympathique!”
Rosina looked up at him and her eyes danced; he returned the look with a responsive glow in his own big pupils.
“I am so glad we meet,” he exclaimed impulsively.
She stepped out of the lift and turned to dismiss him.
“And you?” he asked, bowing above her hand.
“I’m glad too,” she said, and her tone was most sincere.
Chapter Three
LATE in the afternoon of the same day Ottillie, coming in to wake her mistress from a nap which the morning’s long walk had resulted in stretching to a most unusual duration, brought with her a great bunch of those luxuriantly double violets which brim over with perfume and beauty. There was also a note, very short, and couched in a flawless French.
If one must be roused out of a delicious sleep on a warm June day, surely violets, and such a note as accompanied these particular violets, were the least disagreeable means ever invented for accomplishing that end. Rosina’s frown for Ottillie changed into a smile for some one else, and she rose from among her pillows and submitted to her toilet with a good grace. Ottillie, who was French enough and experienced enough never to need to be told things, divined what the note must have contained the second time that she saw her mistress glance at the clock, and so accelerated her ordinary rate of movement that even the gown of lace which appeared to fasten nowhere, was fastened everywhere ere the town bells rang five.
A few minutes after, a garçon in the hotel livery brought up a card, and, Continental etiquette made it quite en règle for Monsieur von Ibn to be ushered into the dainty little salon which the Schweizerhof permitted Rosina to enjoy (for a consideration), and there muse in company with his own violets, while he waited and turned his cane over and over in his gloved hands.
Then Ottillie opened the portières beyond, and Rosina appeared between them, delightfully cool and fresh-looking, and flatteringly glad to see him.
“We seem like quite long friends, do we not?” he said, as he bent above her hand and kissed it lightly.
“Yes, certainly, I feel that I have the sensation of at any rate three weeks,” she answered; and then she sank luxuriously down in a great fauteuil, and was conscious of an all-pervading well-content that it should be too warm to go out, and that he should be there opposite her while she must remain within. She was curious about this man who was so out of the ordinary, and the path along which her curiosity led her seemed a most attractive one.
“Why do you say three weeks,” he asked; “why not three months or three years?”
“But in three years one learns to know another so well, and I do not feel – ”
“Oh,” he interrupted, “it is better as it is; perhaps you may be like I am, and get weary always soon, and then have no longer any wish to see me.”
“Do you get tired of every one?”
He passed his hand across his eyes and sighed and smiled together.
“Yes, madame,” he said, and there was a sad note in his voice, “I get often tired. And it is bad, because I must depend so deeply on who I speak with for my mind to be able to work after. Comprenez-vous?”
She made a movement of assent that he seemed to have paused for, and he continued.
“When I meet a stranger I must always wonder how soon I shall be finished with him. It comes very soon with nearly all.”
“And are you sure that you are always the weary one?”
He looked blank for a moment, then,
“I have already bore you; yes?”
“Not at all, but I was warned this morning that you might possibly commit such a crime.”
“And have I?”
She looked on his earnestness and smiled.
“Have I?” he reiterated; “yes?”
Then she spoke suddenly.
“Why do foreigners always say ‘yes’ at the end of every question that they ask in English? I get so tired of it, it’s so superfluous. Why do they do it?”
He reflected.
“It is polite,” he said, after a moment. “I ask you, ‘Do I bore you?’ and then I ask you, ‘Do I?’”
“But why do you think that it is polite to ask me twice?”
He reflected again, and then replied:
“You are equally droll in English; you are even more droll in English, I think. You say, ‘You will go to walk, will you not?’ and the ’not’ makes no sense at all.”
It was her turn to reflect, and be forced to acquiesce.
“Yes, that is true.”
“And anyway,” he went on, “it is polite for me to ask you twice anything, because that shows that I am twice anxious to please you.”
“So!”
“Yes;” he took a violet from the bowl at his side and began to unclose its petals. “Why did he say that?” he asked, suddenly raising his eyes from the flower to her.
“He! who?”
“Our friend.”
“Why did he say what?”
“Why did he say that I was stupid? I have never been but nice to him.”
She looked startled.
“He never said that you were stupid.”
“You said that he told you that I was stupid.”
“No, I did not. I said that he warned me that – ”
“Oh, it matters not,” he broke in, shrugging his shoulders slightly, “ça ne me fait rien. What he may think of me matters me not at all. Pauvre garçon, he is so most uninteresting himself that I cannot expect interest from him. Ecoutez-donc! for him nothing exists but golf; for him where golf is there is something, elsewhere there is nothing anywhere. What did he say to me of Paris? he said that for him Paris was nothing, because no one plays golf; he said he could throw a dog all over the grounds any morning. I did not ask him what dog, or why a dog, for I thought it was not truly a dog, but just his bad American argot; and, if I must speak truth, pardon me that I find it very good that so stupid a fellow finds me dull. If he found me amusing, I should naturally know that I, too, must be a fool.”
He put the violet to his lips and smiled a little.
“He speaks but English,” he added; “he knows but golf, he has been around the world and has seen nothing. I am quite content to have such a man despise me.”
Then he was silent, biting the purple flower. Rosina rested her chin upon her hand.
“Please go on,” she said briefly, “I am listening.”
He looked at her and smiled.
“I do like Americans,” he went on, “and I see that all the women have small waists, and do not grow so large so soon, but I do not see why they do not learn many things and so become much more nice; why, for example, are they so ignorant of all the world and think their own country alone fine?”
“Are we so?”
“Yes, of a truth. Because I speak English I meet very many of America, and they always want to talk, so naturally I must listen, because no one can arrive at speaking louder surely. And so I must always hear how good the light is in America, and how warm the houses are in America, and how high the buildings are in America, and how much everything has cost – always how much everything has cost; that is always very faithfully told to me. And while I listen I must feel how very narrow to so speak is. And afterwards when I go on to hear how very poor the light is here, and how very cold the hotels are here, I certainly must feel how very ill-bred that is.”
He paused to get a fresh violet, and then continued:
“I see no possible beauty for a place of four walls fifty mètres high; and there can be no health where all is so hot night and day; and so I only listen and am content to be counted so stupid. Why do you go to Zurich Monday?”
The question terminated his monologue with such suddenness that she started involuntarily.
“Why do you ask?”
“Naturally because I want to know.”
“I go because I am anxious to be out of Switzerland before the first of July.”
“But Switzerland is very nice in July.”
“I know; and it is also very crowded.”
“Where shall you be in July?”
“I am not sure; probably in the Tyrol.”
He got up from his seat, went to the chimney-piece, lifted up a vase and turned it about in his hand with a critical air. Then he faced her again and said, with emphasis:
“I shall remain here all summer.”
“In Lucerne?”
“Yes; not perhaps always at the hotel, but somewhere on the lake. I am born here.”
“You are Swiss, then?”
“Yes; if I am Swiss because I am born here.”
“Were you born in Lucerne?”
“No, but at a place which my father had then by Fluellen. It is for that that I love the Vierwaldstattersee.”
“I wish that I had been born here,” Rosina murmured thoughtfully.
“Where are you born?”
“In the fourth house of a row of sixteen, all just alike.”
“How most American!”
She laughed a little.
“I amuse you?” he asked, with a look of pleased non-understanding.
“Oh, so very much!”
He came a little forward and smiled down at her.
“We are really friends, are we not?”
She looked into his big, earnest eyes.
“I think so,” she answered simply, with a little nod.
He moved slowly across the room and, going to the window, turned his back upon her.
“It is cooler out now, let us go out and walk. I like to walk, and you do too, do you not? yes?”
“Oh, please stop saying ‘yes’ like that, it makes me so horribly nervous.”
He continued to look out of the window.
“Are you nervous?” he said. “I am sorry, because it is very bad to be nervous.”
“I shall not be so if you will only cease tacking that ‘yes’ on to the end of every question that you find occasion to ask me.”
“What is ‘tacking’?” he asked, whirling around.
“Attaching.”
“Why did you not pronounce it plainly the first time?”
She rose slowly from her seat and retouched the violets where he had disturbed their carefully arranged disorder. He quitted the window and approached her side.
“I asked you to go out with me,” he reminded her; “will you go? Yes? – I mean ‘No’?” he added in hasty correction.
She bent above the flowers, just to see what he would say next.
“Can you go to walk so,” he inquired, “or shall I go down and wait while you undress?”
She straightened up.
“I can go out this way,” she told him; “I have only to get my hat.”
“And you will go now?”
“Yes, with pleasure.”
“Is it long to get a hat? I will go down to wait for you, you know.”
“It is five minutes.”
“Is it really five minutes?” he asked anxiously; “or shall I be there very much longer?”
“If I say five minutes it will be five minutes.”
He took his hat and cane in his left hand and extended the other to her with a smile.
“I will go and wait,” he said.
She gave him her hand; he held it a minute, looking down into her eyes, which wavered and fell before his.
“Comme vous êtes charmante!” he exclaimed in a low voice, and, bending, pressed a kiss (a most fervent one this time) upon the fingers which he raised within his own.
After which he left the room at once.
Rosina caught a quick breath as she went in to where her maid sat mending some lace.
“Get my things, Ottillie, I am going out.”
“What a beautiful color madame has,” Ottillie remarked, as she rose hastily and went towards the wardrobe.
Rosina looked at herself in the mirror. She was forced to smile at what she saw there, for the best cosmetic in the wide world is the knowledge that the right person is waiting downstairs.
“Do hurry, Ottillie,” she said impatiently, “and get me out a pretty, a very pretty, hat; do you hear?”
And then she felt with a glorious rush of joy how more than good life is when June is fair, and one is young, and —
“Where shall we walk?” he asked, when she came down to him.
“On the Quai, of course. No one ever walks anywhere else.”
“I do often, and we did this morning,” he replied, as they passed out through the maze of tables and orange-trees that covered the terrace before the hotel.
“I should have said ‘no one who is anybody.’”
He looked at her, a sadly puzzled trouble in his eyes.
“Is it a joke you make there,” he asked, “or but your argot?”
“I don’t know,” she said, unfurling her parasol; “the question that I am putting to myself just now is, why did not you raise this for me instead of allowing me to do it for myself?”
He looked at her fixedly.
“Why should I do so? or is that a joke?”
“No, I asked that in dead earnest.”
“In dead – in dead – ” he stammered hopelessly; “oh,” he exclaimed, “perhaps it is that I am really stupid, after all.”
“No, no,” she laughed; “it is I that am behaving badly. It amuses me to tease you by using words that you do not understand.”
“But that is not very nice of you,” he said, smiling. “Why do you want to tease me?”
“I don’t know, but I do.”
He laughed lightly.
“We amuse ourselves together, n’est-ce pas?” he asked. “It is like children to laugh and not know why. I find such pleasure very pleasant. One cannot be always wise – above all, with a woman.”
“I do not want to be wise,” she said, as they joined the promenading crowd; “I much prefer to have my clothes fit well.”
Then he laughed outright.
“Vous êtes si drôle!” he said apologetically.
“Oh, I don’t mind your laughing,” she said, “but I do wish that you would walk on the other side.”
“The other side of the street?” he asked, with surprise.
“No, no; the other side of me.”
“Why should I not be on this side as well as on that?”
“Because that’s the wrong one to be on.”
“It is not! I am on the very right place.”
“No; you should be between the lady and the street.”
“Why?” he demanded, as he raised his hat to some one.
“To protect her – me.”
“To protect you how? Nothing will come up out of the lake to hurt you.” Then he raised his hat to some people that she bowed to.
“It isn’t that, it is that the outside is where the man should walk. It’s the custom. It’s his proper place.”
“No, it is not. I am proper where I am; I would be improper if I was over there.”
“In America men always walk on the outside.”
“But we are not in America, we are in Lucerne, and that is Europe, and for Europe I am right. Mon Dieu, do you think that I do not know!”
Rosina shrugged her shoulders.
“I am really distressed when we meet any Americans, because I am sure that they think that you have not been well brought up.”
Von Ibn shrugged his shoulders.
“There are not many Americans here to think anything,” he said carelessly, “and all the Europeans whom we meet know that I am well brought up whichever side I may choose to walk upon.” He bowed again to some carriage people.
She trailed her pace a little and then paused; he was such a temptation that she could not resist.
“I do wish,” she said earnestly, “that to please me you would do as I ask you, just this once!”
He stopped short and stared first at her and then at the lake.
“I wonder,” he said slowly, – “I wonder if we are to be together ever after these days?”
“Why do you wonder that? Would you rather never see me again than do something to please me?”
“No, no,” he said hastily, a little shock in his tone, “but you must understand that if we are to be much together I cannot begin with the making of my obedience to suit you. And yet, if it is but for these two days, I can very well do whatever you may wish.”
He moved out of the line so as to think maturely upon such a weighty matter. She covered her real interest in his meditations with an excellent assumption of interest in the superb view before her. The Rigi was towering there, and its crest and the crests of all its lofty neighbors were brightly silvered by the descending sun. From Pilatus on the right, away to the green banks of Weggis and Vitznau on the left, the lake spread in blue and bronze, and by the opposite shore the water’s calm was such that a ghostly Lucerne of the under-world lay upside down just beneath its level, and mocked reality above by the perfection of detail. Little bright-sailed boats danced here and there, a large steamer was gliding into the landing by the Gare, and the music from a band aboard came floating to their ears.
That little gray mother-duck who raises so many families under the shelter of the Schweizerhof Quai presently noticed these two silent people, and, suspecting them of possessing superfluous bread, came hastily paddling to the feast. It made Rosina feel badly to see the patient little creature wait there below; but she was breadless, and could only muse over the curious similarity of a woman’s lot with a hungry duck’s, until the duck gave up in despair and paddled off, leaving a possible lesson in her wake.
“Oh dear!” she exclaimed then, “I’m going to Zurich Monday, and you’re going to stay here all summer; we shall never meet again, so what is the use of thinking so long over nothing!”
Then he put his hand up, gave his moustache ends a twist, and turned to walk on. He was still on the same side, and there was a sort of emphasis about his being there which made her want to laugh, even while she recognized the fact that the under-current of the minute was a strong one – stronger perhaps than she was understanding just then.
“You don’t feel altogether positive as to your summer plans, I see?” she queried, with a little glance of fun.
“I never am positive,” he said, almost grimly. “I will never bind myself even by a thread. I must go free; no one must think to hold me.”
“I’m sure I don’t want to hold you,” she laughed; “I think you are dreadfully rude, but of course you can do what you please.”
“You find me rude?” he asked soberly.
“Yes, indeed, I think you are very rude. Here we are still on the first day of our acquaintance, and you refuse absolutely to grant me such a trifling request.”
They had continued to follow the stone dalles of the embankment and were now near the end of the Quai; he stopped short again, and again stared at the mountains.
“Ask me what you will,” he said, after a moment’s pause, “and you shall have it; but to that first most absurd asking I shall always refuse.”
Her eyes began to dance.
“If I asked you to buy me an automobile!” she ventured.
He glanced at her quickly.
“Do you ask me for an automobile?” he demanded.
Her eyes wandered towards a certain shop on the other side of the carriage way.
“If I asked you for that necklace in the window there!”
He raised his shoulders slightly.
“Ladies prefer to buy their own necklaces,” he said briefly.
She gave him a furtive look out of the corner of her eye.
“Monsieur, suppose I beg you to take me back to the hotel and henceforth never speak to me!”
He did not appear in the slightest degree alarmed. Instead he put his hand beneath her arm and turned her for another round of promenade.
“I think the automobile will be best,” he said tranquilly. “I will find you a good chauffeur, and you can go to Zurich on its wheels.”
“I only said ‘if,’ you know,” she murmured.
“Yes, I know,” he replied; “but an automobile is always useful.” He thought a moment and then added, “About how much will you choose to pay for it?”
In spite of herself she started and stared at him. He met her eyes with a smile of mockery; Its innuendo was unbearable.
“You know very well,” she burst forth impetuously, “that I would never have thought of really accepting an automobile from you!”
Then he laughed again with fresh amusement.
“Comme madame se fâche!” he cried, “it is most droll! All that I may say you will believe.”
“I find you very exasperating,” Rosina exclaimed, her cheeks becoming hotly pink; “you amuse yourself in a way that transcends politeness. I honestly think that you are very rude indeed, and I am in earnest now.”
He made a careless movement with his head.
“Would you have preferred that I should believe you really expect of me an automobile?” he asked.
“You could not possibly have thought that anyhow, and so why should you have spoken as if you were afraid lest I might have meant it?”
He rapped on a tree with his cane as he passed it.
“‘Might,’ and ‘would,’ and ‘should,’” he said placidly, “those are the hardest words for a stranger to learn correctly.”
She felt her temper slipping its anchor.
“Probably when your tutor endeavored to teach you their difference you feared that yielding to his way might be sacrificing your independence, and so you refused to consider his instruction.”
He struck another tree with his cane.
“When you talk so fast and use such great words I cannot understand at all,” he said calmly.
Then she fairly choked.
“Are you quite really angry?” he asked with curiosity. She turned her face away and kept it averted.
“Let us go into the café of the Nationale and dine,” he proposed suddenly.
“No,” she said quickly, – “no, I must go home at once. I have a dinner engagement, and I must change my dress before I go.”
“Then I shall not see you this evening?”
“No” (very bitterly); “what a pity that will be!”
“But to-morrow?”
“I am going with a party to the Gutsch.”
“But that will not be all day?”
“Perhaps.”
He hesitated in his step, and then came to a full stop.
“Let us go up this little street,” he suggested. “I was there yesterday; it is interesting really.”
She continued to walk on alone and he was obliged to rejoin her; then he glanced downward somewhat anxiously.
“We cannot speak here,” he said in a low tone, “we know so many people that come against us each minute. Do walk with me up to the church there, we cannot go to the hotel like this.”
It is true that the Quai at Lucerne has a trick of slipping away beneath one’s feet to the end that the hotel is forever springing up in one’s face. At this moment it loomed disagreeably close at hand.
“If you want to walk farther, monsieur, you will have to walk alone; I am going home.”
For answer he took her arm firmly in his and turned her across towards the church street. Well-bred people do not have scenes on the Schweizerhof Quai, so Rosina went where she was steered by the iron grip on her elbow.
The instant that they were out of the crowd his manner and voice altered materially.
“You must forgive me,” he pleaded. “I thought that you understood; I thought that we were together amused; it was against my intention to offend you.”
She stopped and looked at a window full of carved bears and lions; various expressions contended in her face, but none of them were soft or sweet.
“You pardon me, do you not?” he went on, laying his fingers upon her arm, while beneath his heavy eyelids there crept a look which his family would have regarded as too good to be true.
She shook the hand off quickly with an apprehensive glance at their surroundings.
“I ask you ten thousand pardons,” he repeated; “what can I do to make you know my feeling is true?”
She bit her lip, and then a sudden thought occurred to her. Her anger took wings at once.
“Will you walk back to the hotel on the outside,” she asked seriously, looking up into his face.
He gave a quick movement of surprise, and then made his customary pause for decision.
“How drolly odd women are,” he murmured presently, “and you are so very oddly droll!”
“But will you do it?” she repeated insistently.
He took his cane and drew a line in the dust between two of the cement blocks of the sidewalk, and then he lifted his eyes to hers with a smile so sweet and bright, so liquidly warm and winning, that it metamorphosed him for the nonce into a rarely handsome man.
