19IA SHADOW DANCE
Three years later Destiny still wore a rosy face for Nihla Quellen. And, for a young American of whom Nihla had never even heard, Destiny still remained the laughing jade he had always known, beckoning him ever nearer, with the coquettish promise of her curved forefinger, to fame and wealth immeasurable.
Seated now on a moonlit lawn, before his sketching easel, this optimistic young man, whose name was Barres, continued to observe the movements of a dim white figure which had emerged from the villa opposite, and was now stealing toward him across the dew-drenched grass.
When the white figure was quite near it halted, holding up filmy skirts and peering intently at him.
“May one look?” she inquired, in that now celebrated voice of hers, through which ever seemed to sound a hint of hidden laughter.
“Certainly,” he replied, rising from his folding camp stool.
She tiptoed over the wet grass, came up beside him, gazed down at the canvas on his easel.
“Can you really see to paint? Is the moon bright enough?” she asked.
“Yes. But one has to be familiar with one’s palette.”
20
“Oh. You seem to know yours quite perfectly, monsieur.”
“Enough to mix colours properly.”
“I didn’t realise that painters ever actually painted pictures by moonlight.”
“It’s a sort of hit or miss business, but the notes made are interesting,” he explained.
“What do you do with these moonlight studies?”
“Use them as notes in the studio when a moonlight picture is to be painted.”
“Are you then a realist, monsieur?”
“As much of a realist as anybody with imagination can be,” he replied, smiling at her charming, moonlit face.
“I understand. Realism is merely honesty plus the imagination of the individual.”
“A delightfulmot, madam——”
“Mademoiselle,” she corrected him demurely. “Are you English?”
“American.”
“Oh. Then may I venture to converse with you in English?” She said it in exquisite English, entirely without accent.
“YouareEnglish!” he exclaimed under his breath.
“No ... I don’t know what I am.... Isn’t it charming out here? What particular view are you painting?”
“The Seine, yonder.”
She bent daintily over his sketch, holding up the skirts of her ball-gown.
“Your sketch isn’t very far advanced, is it?” she inquired seriously.
“Not very,” he smiled.
They stood there together in silence for a while,21looking out over the moonlit river to the misty, tree-covered heights.
Through lighted rows of open windows in the elaborate little villa across the lawn came lively music and the distant noise of animated voices.
“Do you know,” he ventured smilingly, “that your skirts and slippers are soaking wet?”
“I don’t care. Isn’t this June night heavenly?”
She glanced across at the lighted house. “It’s so hot and noisy in there; one dances only with discomfort. A distaste for it all sent me out on the terrace. Then I walked on the lawn. Then I beheld you!... Am I interrupting your work, monsieur? I suppose I am.” She looked up at him naïvely.
He said something polite. An odd sense of having seen her somewhere possessed him now. From the distant house came the noisy American music of a two-step. With charming grace, still inspecting him out of her dark eyes, the girl began to move her pretty feet in rhythm with the music.
“Shall we?” she inquired mischievously.... “Unless you are too busy——”
The next moment they were dancing together there on the wet lawn, under the high lustre of the moon, her fresh young face and fragrant figure close to his.
During their second dance she said serenely:
“They’ll raise the dickens if I stay here any longer. Do you know the Comte d’Eblis?”
“The Senator? The numismatist?”
“Yes.”
“No, I don’t know him. I am only a Latin Quarter student.”
“Well, he is giving that party. He is giving it for me—in my honour. That is his villa. And I”—she22laughed—“am going to marry him—perhaps! Isn’t this a delightful escapade of mine?”
“Isn’t it rather an indiscreet one?” he asked smilingly.
“Frightfully. But I like it. How did you happen to pitch your easel on his lawn?”
“The river and the hills—their composition appealed to me from here. It is the best view of the Seine.”
“Are you glad you came?”
They both laughed at the mischievous question.
During their third dance she became a little apprehensive and kept looking over her shoulder toward the house.
“There’s a man expected there,” she whispered, “Ferez Bey. He’s as soft-footed as a cat and he always prowls in my vicinity. At times it almost seems to me as though he were slyly watching me—as though he were employed to keep an eye on me.”
“A Turk?”
“Eurasian.... I wonder what they think of my absence? Alexandre—the Comte d’Eblis—won’t like it.”
“Had you better go?”
“Yes; I ought to, but I won’t.... Wait a moment!” She disengaged herself from his arms. “Hide your easel and colour-box in the shrubbery, in case anybody comes to look for me.”
She helped him strap up and fasten the telescope-easel; they placed the paraphernalia behind the blossoming screen of syringa. Then, coming together, she gave herself to him again, nestling between his arms with a little laugh; and they fell into step once more with the distant dance-music. Over the grass their united shadows glided, swaying, gracefully interlocked—moon-born23phantoms which dogged their light young feet....
A man came out on the stone terrace under the Chinese lanterns. When they saw him they hastily backed into the obscurity of the shrubbery.
“Nihla!” he called, and his heavy voice was vibrant with irritation and impatience.
He was a big man. He walked with a bulky, awkward gait—a few paces only, out across the terrace.
“Nihla!” he bawled hoarsely.
Then two other men and a woman appeared on the terrace where the lanterns were strung. The woman called aloud in the darkness:
“Nihla! Nihla! Where are you, little devil?” Then she and the two men with her went indoors, laughing and skylarking, leaving the bulky man there alone.
The young fellow in the shrubbery felt the girl’s hand tighten on his coat sleeve, felt her slender body quiver with stifled laughter. The desire to laugh seized him, too; and they clung there together, choking back their mirth while the big man who had first appeared waddled out across the lawn toward the shrubbery, shouting:
“Nihla! Where are you then?” He came quite close to where they stood, then turned, shouted once or twice and presently disappeared across the lawn toward a walled garden. Later, several other people came out on the terrace, calling, “Nihla, Nihla,” and then went indoors, laughing boisterously.
The young fellow and the girl beside him were now quite weak and trembling with suppressed mirth.
They had not dared venture out on the lawn, although dance music had begun again.
24
“Is it your name they called?” he asked, his eyes very intent upon her face.
“Yes, Nihla.”
“I recognise you now,” he said, with a little thrill of wonder.
“I suppose so,” she replied with amiable indifference. “Everybody knows me.”
She did not ask his name; he did not offer to enlighten her. What difference, after all, could the name of an American student make to the idol of Europe, Nihla Quellen?
“I’m in a mess,” she remarked presently. “He will be quite furious with me. It is going to be most disagreeable for me to go back into that house. He has really an atrocious temper when made ridiculous.”
“I’m awfully sorry,” he said, sobered by her seriousness.
She laughed:
“Oh, pouf! I really don’t care. But perhaps you had better leave me now. I’ve spoiled your moonlight picture, haven’t I?”
“But think what you have given me to make amends!” he replied.
She turned and caught his hands in hers with adorable impulsiveness:
“You’re a sweet boy—do you know it! We’ve had a heavenly time, haven’t we? Do you really think you ought to go—so soon?”
“Don’t you think so, Nihla?”
“I don’t want you to go. Anyway, there’s a train every two hours——”
“I’ve a canoe down by the landing. I shall paddle back as I came——”
“A canoe!” she exclaimed, enchanted. “Will you take me with you?”
25
“To Paris?”
“Of course! Will you?”
“In your ball-gown?”
“I’d adore it! Will you?”
“That is an absolutely crazy suggestion,” he said.
“I know it. The world is only a big asylum. There’s a path to the river behind these bushes. Quick—pick up your painting traps——”
“But, Nihla, dear——”
“Oh, please! I’m dying to run away with you!”
“To Paris?” he demanded, still incredulous that the girl really meant it.
“Of course! You can get a taxi at the Pont-au-Change and take me home. Will you?”
“It would be wonderful, of course——”
“It will be paradise!” she exclaimed, slipping her hand into his. “Now, let us run like the dickens!”
In the uncertain moonlight, filtering through the shrubbery, they found a hidden path to the river; and they took it together, lightly, swiftly, speeding down the slope, all breathless with laughter, along the moonlit way.
In the suburban villa of the Comte d’Eblis a wine-flushed and very noisy company danced on, supped at midnight, continued the revel into the starlit morning hours. The place was a jungle of confetti.
Their host, restless, mortified, angry, perplexed by turns, was becoming obsessed at length with dull premonitions and vaguer alarms.
He waddled out to the lawn several times, still wearing his fancy gilt and tissue cap, and called:
“Nihla! Damnation! Answer me, you little fool!”
He went down to the river, where the gaily painted row-boats and punts lay, and scanned the silvered26flood, tortured by indefinite apprehensions. About dawn he started toward the weed-grown, slippery river-stairs for the last time, still crowned with his tinsel cap; and there in the darkness he found his aged boat-man, fishing for gudgeon with a four-cornered net suspended to the end of a bamboo pole.
“Have you see anything of Mademoiselle Nihla?” he demanded, in a heavy, unsteady voice, tremulous with indefinable fears.
“Monsieur le Comte, Mademoiselle Quellen went out in a canoe with a young gentleman.”
“W-what is that you tell me!” faltered the Comte d’Eblis, turning grey in the face.
“Last night, about ten o’clock, M’sieu le Comte. I was out in the moonlight fishing for eels. She came down to the shore—took a canoe yonder by the willows. The young man had a double-bladed paddle. They were singing.”
“They—they have not returned?”
“No, M’sieu le Comte——”
“Who was the—man?”
“I could not see——”
“Very well.” He turned and looked down the dusky river out of light-coloured, murderous eyes. Then, always awkward in his gait, he retraced his steps to the house. There a servant accosted him on the terrace:
“The telephone, if Monsieur le Comte pleases——”
“Who is calling?” he demanded with a flare of fury.
“Paris, if it pleases Monsieur le Comte.”
The Count d’Eblis went to his own quarters, seated himself, and picked up the receiver:
“Who is it?” he asked thickly.
“Max Freund.”
“What has h-happened?” he stammered in sudden terror.
27
Over the wire came the distant reply, perfectly clear and distinct:
“Ferez Bey was arrested in his own house at dinner last evening, and was immediately conducted to the frontier, escorted by Government detectives.... Is Nihla with you?”
The Count’s teeth were chattering now. He managed to say:
“No, I don’t know where she is. She was dancing. Then, all at once, she was gone. Of what was Colonel Ferez suspected?”
“I don’t know. But perhaps we might guess.”
“Areyoufollowed?”
“Yes.”
“By—by whom?”
“By Souchez.... Good-bye, if I don’t see you. I join Ferez. And look out for Nihla. She’ll trick you yet!”
The Count d’Eblis called:
“Wait, for God’s sake, Max!”—listened; called again in vain. “The one-eyed rabbit!” he panted, breathing hard and irregularly. His large hand shook as he replaced the instrument. He sat there as though paralysed, for a moment or two. Mechanically he removed his tinsel cap and thrust it into the pocket of his evening coat. Suddenly the dull hue of anger dyed neck, ears and temple:
“By God!” he gasped. “What is that she-devil trying to do to me? What has shedone!”
After another moment of staring fixedly at nothing, he opened the table drawer, picked up a pistol and poked it into his breast pocket.
Then he rose, heavily, and stood looking out of the window at the paling east, his pendulous under lip aquiver.
28IISUNRISE
The first sunbeams had already gilded her bedroom windows, barring the drawn curtains with light, when the man arrived. He was still wearing his disordered evening dress under a light overcoat; his soiled shirt front was still crossed by the red ribbon of watered silk; third class orders striped his breast, where also the brand new Turkish sunburst glimmered.
A sleepy maid in night attire answered his furious ringing; the man pushed her aside with an oath and strode into the semi-darkness of the corridor. He was nearly six feet tall, bulky; but his legs were either too short or something else was the matter with them, for when he walked he waddled, breathing noisily from the ascent of the stairs.
“Is your mistress here?” he demanded, hoarse with his effort.
“Y—yes, monsieur——”
“When did she come in?” And, as the scared and bewildered maid hesitated: “Damn you, answer me! When did Mademoiselle Quellen come in? I’ll wring your neck if you lie to me!”
The maid began to whimper:
“Monsieur le Comte—I do not wish to lie to you.... Mademoiselle Nihla came back with the dawn——”
“Alone?”
29
The maid wrung her hands:
“Does Monsieur le Comte m-mean to harm her?”
“Will you answer me, you snivelling cat!” he panted between his big, discoloured teeth. He had fished out a pistol from his breast pocket, dragging with it a silk handkerchief, a fancy cap of tissue and gilt, and some streamers of confetti which fell to the carpet around his feet.
“Now,” he breathed in a half-strangled voice, “answer my questions. Was she alone when she came in?”
“N-no.”
“Who was with her?”
“A—a——”
“A man?”
The maid trembled violently and nodded.
“What man?”
“M-Monsieur le Comte, I have never before beheld him——”
“You lie!”
“I do not lie! I have never before seen him, Monsieur le——”
“Did you learn his name?”
“No——”
“Did you hear what they said?”
“They spoke in English——”
“What!” The man’s puffy face went flabby white, and his big, badly made frame seemed to sag for a moment. He laid a large fat hand flat against the wall, as though to support and steady himself, and gazed dully at the terrified maid.
And she, shivering in her night-robe and naked feet, stared back into the pallid face, with its coarse, greyish moustache and little short side-whiskers which vulgarized it completely—gazed in unfeigned terror at the sagging, deadly, lead-coloured eyes.
30
“Is the man there—in there now—with her?” demanded the Comte d’Eblis heavily.
“No, monsieur.”
“Gone?”
“Oh, Monsieur le Comte, the young man stayed but a moment——”
“Where were they? In her bedroom?”
“In the salon. I—I served a pâté—a glass of wine—and the young gentleman was gone the next minute——”
A dull red discoloured the neck and features of the Count.
“That’s enough,” he said; and waddled past her along the corridor to the furthest door; and wrenched it open with one powerful jerk.
In the still, golden gloom of the drawn curtains, now striped with sunlight, a young girl suddenly sat up in bed.
“Alexandre!” she exclaimed in angry astonishment.
“You slut!” he said, already enraged again at the mere sight of her. “Where did you go last night!”
“What are you doing in my bedroom?” she demanded, confused but flushed with anger. “Leave it! Do you hear!—” She caught sight of the pistol in his hand and stiffened.
He stepped nearer; her dark, dilated gaze remained fixed on the pistol.
“Answer me,” he said, the menacing roar rising in his voice. “Where did you go last night when you left the house?”
“I—I went out—on the lawn.”
“And then?”
“I had had enough of your party: I came back to Paris.”
“Andthen?”
31
“I came here, of course.”
“Who was with you?”
Then, for the first time, she began to comprehend. She swallowed desperately.
“Who was your companion?” he repeated.
“A—man.”
“You brought him here?”
“He—came in—for a moment.”
“Who was he?”
“I—never before saw him.”
“You picked up a man in the street and brought him here with you?”
“N-not on the street——”
“Where?”
“On the lawn—while your guests were dancing——”
“And you came to Paris with him?”
“Y-yes.”
“Who was he?”
“I don’t know——”
“If you don’t name him, I’ll kill you!” he yelled, losing the last vestige of self-control. “What kind of story are you trying to tell me, you lying drab! You’ve got a lover! Confess it!”
“I have not!”
“Liar! So this is how you’ve laughed at me, mocked me, betrayed me, made a fool of me! You!—with your fierce little snappish ways of a virgin! You with your dangerous airs of a tiger-cat if a man so much as laid a finger on your vicious body! So Mademoiselle-Don’t-touch-me had a lover all the while. Max Freund warned me to keep an eye on you!” He lost control of himself again; his voice became a hoarse shout: “Max Freund begged me not to trust you! You filthy little beast! Good God! Was I crazy to believe in you—to talk without reserve in your presence! What kind of imbecile32was I to offer you marriage because I was crazy enough to believe that there was no other way to possess you! You—a Levantine dancing girl—a common painted thing of the public footlights—a creature of brasserie and cabaret! And you posed as Mademoiselle Nitouche! A novice! A devotee of chastity! And, by God, your devilish ingenuity at last persuaded me that you actually were what you said you were. And all Paris knew you were fooling me—all Paris was laughing in its dirty sleeve—mocking me—spitting on me——”
“All Paris,” she said, in an unsteady voice, “gave you credit for being my lover. And I endured it. And you knew it was not true. Yet you never denied it.... But as for me, I never had a lover. When I told you that I told you the truth. And it is true to-day as it was yesterday. Nobody believes it of a dancing girl. Now,youno longer believe it. Very well, there is no occasion for melodrama. I tried to fall in love with you: I couldn’t. I did not desire to marry you. You insisted. Very well; you can go.”
“Not before I learn the name of your lover of last night!” he retorted, now almost beside himself with fury, and once more menacing her with his pistol. “I’ll get that much change out of all the money I’ve lavished on you!” he yelled. “Tell me his name or I’ll kill you!”
She reached under her pillow, clutched a jewelled watch and purse, and hurled them at him. She twisted from her arm a gemmed bracelet, tore every flashing ring from her fingers, and flung them in a handful straight at his head.
“There’s some more change for you!” she panted. “Now, leave my bedroom!”
“I’ll have that man’s name first!”
33
The girl laughed in his distorted face. He was within an ace of shooting her—of firing point-blank into the lovely, flushed features, merely to shatter them, destroy, annihilate. He had the desire to do it. But her breathless, contemptuous laugh broke that impulse—relaxed it, leaving it flaccid. And after an interval something else intervened to stay his hand at the trigger—something that crept into his mind; something he had begun to suspect that she knew. Suddenly he became convinced that shedidknow it—that she believed that he dared not kill her and stand the investigation of a public trial before ajuge d’instruction—that he could not afford to have his own personal affairs scrutinised too closely.
He still wanted to kill her—shoot her there where she sat in bed, watching him out of scornful young eyes. So intense was his need to slay—to disfigure, brutalise this girl who had mocked him, that the raging desire hurt him physically. He leaned back, resting against the silken wall, momentarily weakened by the violence of passion. But his pistol still threatened her.
No; he dared not. There was a better, surer way to utterly destroy her,—a way he had long ago prepared,—not expecting any such contingency as this, but merely as a matter of self-insurance.
His levelled weapon wavered, dropped, held loosely now. He still glared at her out of pallid and blood-shot eyes in silence. After a while:
“You hell-cat,” he said slowly and distinctly. “Who is your English lover? Tell me his name or I’ll beat your face to a pulp!”
“I have no English lover.”
“Do you think,” he went on heavily, disregarding her reply, “that I don’t know why you chose an Englishman?34You thought you could blackmail me, didn’t you?”
“How?” she demanded wearily.
Again he ignored her reply:
“Is he one of the Embassy?” he demanded. “Is he some emissary of Grey’s? Does he come from their intelligence department? Or is he only a police jackal? Or some lesser rat?”
She shrugged; her night-robe slipped and she drew it over her shoulder with a quick movement. And the man saw the deep blush spreading over face and throat.
“By God!” he said, “youarean actress! I admit it. But now you are going to learn something about real life. You think you’ve got me, don’t you?—you and your Englishman? Because I have been fool enough to trust you—hide nothing from you—act frankly and openly in your presence. You thought you’d get a hold on me, so that if I ever caught you at your treacherous game you could defy me and extort from me the last penny! You thought all that out—very thriftily and cleverly—you and your Englishman between you—didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t you? Then why did you ask me the other day whether it was not German money which was paying for the newspaper which I bought?”
“TheMot d’Ordre?”
“Certainly.”
“I asked you that because Ferez Bey is notoriously in Germany’s pay. And Ferez Bey financed the affair. You said so. Besides, you and he discussed it before me in my own salon.”
“And you suspected that I bought theMot d’Ordrewith German money for the purpose of carrying out German propaganda in a Paris daily paper?”
35
“I don’t know why Ferez Bey gave you the money to buy it.”
“He did not give me the money.”
“You said so. Who did?”
“You!” he fairly yelled.
“W-what!” stammered the girl, confounded.
“Listen to me, you rat!” he said fiercely. “I was not such a fool as you believed me to be. I lavished money on you; you made a fortune for yourself out of your popularity, too. Do you remember endorsing a cheque drawn to your order by Ferez Bey?”
“Yes. You had borrowed every penny I possessed. You said that Ferez Bey owed you as much. So I accepted his cheque——”
“That cheque paid for theMot d’Ordre. It is drawn to your order; it bears your endorsement; theMot d’Ordrewas purchased in your name. And it was Max Freund who insisted that I take that precaution. Now, try to blackmail me!—you and your English spy!” he cried triumphantly, his voice breaking into a squeak.
Not yet understanding, merely conscious of some vague and monstrous danger, the girl sat motionless, regarding him intently out of beautiful, intelligent eyes.
He burst into laughter, made falsetto by the hysteria of sheer hatred:
“That’s where you are now!” he said, leering down at her. “Every paper I ever made you sign incriminates you; your cancelled cheque is in the same packet; yourdossieris damning and complete. You didn’t know that Ferez Bey was sent across the frontier yesterday, did you? Your English spy didn’t inform you last night, did he?”
“N-no.”
“You lie! Youdidknow it! That was why you36stole away last night and met your jackal—to sell him something besides yourself, this time! You knew they had arrested Ferez! I don’t know how you knew it, but you did. And you told your lover. And both of you thought you had me at last, didn’t you?”
“I—what are you trying to say to me—do to me?” she stammered, losing colour for the first time.
“Put you where you belong—you dirty spy!” he said with grinning ferocity. “If there is to be trouble, I’ve prepared for it. When they try you for espionage, they’ll try you as a foreigner—a dancing girl in the pay of Germany—as my mistress whom Max Freund and I discover in treachery to France, and whom I instantly denounce to the proper authorities!”
He shoved his pistol into his breast pocket and put on his marred silk hat.
“Which do you think they will believe—you or the Count d’Eblis?” he demanded, the nervous leer twitching at his heavy lips. “Which do you think they will believe—your denials and counter-accusations against me, or Max Freund’s corroboration, and the evidence of the packet I shall now deliver to the authorities—the packet containing every cursed document necessary to convict you!—you filthy little——”
The girl bounded from her bed to the floor, her dark eyes blazing:
“Damn you!” she said. “Get out of my bedroom!”
Taken aback, he retreated a pace or two, and, at the furious menace of the little clenched fist, stepped another pace out into the corridor. The door crashed in his face; the bolt shot home.
In twenty minutes Nihla Quellen, the celebrated and adored of European capitals, crept out of the street37door. She wore the dress of a Finistère peasant; her hair was grey, her step infirm.
Thecommissaire, twoagents de police, and a Government detective, one Souchez, already on their way to identify and arrest her, never even glanced at the shabby, infirm figure which hobbled past them on the sidewalk and feebly mounted an omnibus marked Gare du Nord.
For a long time Paris was carefully combed for the dancer, Nihla Quellen, until more serious affairs occupied the authorities, and presently the world at large. For, in a few weeks, war burst like a clap of thunder over Europe, leaving the whole world stunned and reeling. The dossier of Nihla Quellen, the dancing girl, was tossed into secret archives, together with the dossier of one Ferez Bey, an Eurasian, now far beyond French jurisdiction, and already very industrious in the United States about God knows what, in company with one Max Freund.
As for Monsieur the Count d’Eblis, he remained a senator, an owner of many third-rate decorations, and of theMot d’Ordre.
And he remained on excellent terms with everybody at the Swedish, Greek, and Bulgarian legations, and the Turkish Embassy, too. And continued in cipher communication with Max Freund and Ferez Bey in America.
Otherwise, he was still president of the Numismatic Society of Spain, and he continued to add to his wonderful collection of coins, and to keep up his voluminous numismatic correspondence.
He was growing stouter, too, which increased his spinal waddle when he walked; and he became very38prosperous financially, through fortunate “operations,” as he explained, with one Bolo Pasha.
He had only one regret to interfere with his sleep and his digestion; he was sorry he had not fired his pistol into the youthful face of Nihla Quellen. He should have avenged himself, taken his chances, and above everything else he should have destroyed her beauty. His timidity and caution still caused him deep and bitter chagrin.
For nearly a year he heard absolutely nothing concerning her. Then one day a letter arrived from Ferez Bey through Max Freund, both being in New York. And when, using his key to the cipher, he extracted the message it contained, he had learned, among other things, that Nihla Quellen was in New York, employed as a teacher in a school for dancing.
The gist of his reply to Ferez Bey was that Nihla Quellen had already outlived her usefulness on earth, and that Max Freund should attend to the matter at the first favourable opportunity.
39IIISUNSET
On the edge of evening she came out of the Palace of Mirrors and crossed the wet asphalt, which already reflected primrose lights from a clearing western sky.
A few moments before, he had been thinking of her, never dreaming that she was in America. But he knew her instantly, there amid the rush and clatter of the street, recognised her even in the twilight of the passing storm—perhaps not alone from the half-caught glimpse of her shadowy, averted face, nor even from that young, lissome figure so celebrated in Europe. There is a sixth sense—the sense of nearness to what is familiar. When it awakes we call it premonition.
The shock of seeing her, the moment’s exciting incredulity, passed before he became aware that he was already following her through swarming metropolitan throngs released from the toil of a long, wet day in early spring.
Through every twilit avenue poured the crowds; through every cross-street a rosy glory from the west was streaming; and in its magic he saw her immortally transfigured, where the pink light suffused the crossings, only to put on again her lovely mortality in the shadowy avenue.
At Times Square she turned west, straight into the dazzling fire of sunset, and he at her slender heels, not knowing why, not even asking it of himself, not thinking, not caring.
40
A third figure followed them both.
The bronze giants south of them stirred, swung their great hammers against the iron bell; strokes of the hour rang out above the din of Herald Square, inaudible in the traffic roar another square away, lost, drowned out long before the pleasant bell-notes penetrated to Forty-second Street, into which they both had turned.
Yet, as though occultly conscious that some hour had struck on earth, significant to her, she stopped, turned, and looked back—looked quite through him, seeing neither him nor the one-eyed man who followed them both—as though her line of vision were the East itself, where, across the grey sea’s peril, a thousand miles of cannon were sounding the hour from the North Sea to the Alps.
He passed her at her very elbow—aware of her nearness, as though suddenly close to a young orchard in April. The girl, too, resumed her way, unconscious of him, of his youthful face set hard with controlled emotion.
The one-eyed man followed them both.
A few steps further and she turned into the entrance to one of those sprawling, pretentious restaurants, the sham magnificence of which becomes grimy overnight. He halted, swung around, retraced his steps and followed her. And at his heels two shapes followed them very silently—her shadow and his own—so close together now, against the stucco wall that they seemed like Destiny and Fate linked arm in arm.
The one-eyed man halted at the door for a few moments. Then he, too, went in, dogged by his sinister shadow.
The red sunset’s rays penetrated to the rotunda and were quenched there in a flood of artificial light; and41there their sun-born shadows vanished, and three strange new shadows, twisted and grotesque, took their places.
She continued on into the almost empty restaurant, looming dimly beyond. He followed; the one-eyed man followed both.
The place into which they stepped was circular, centred by a waterfall splashing over concrete rocks. In the ruffled pool goldfish glimmered, nearly motionless, and mandarin ducks floated, preening exotic plumage.
A wilderness of tables surrounded the pool, set for the expected patronage of the coming evening. The girl seated herself at one of these.
At the next table he found a place for himself, entirely unnoticed by her. The one-eyed man took the table behind them. A waiter presented himself to take her order; another waiter came up leisurely to attend to him. A third served the one-eyed man. There were only a few inches between the three tables. Yet the girl, deeply preoccupied, paid no attention to either man, although both kept their eyes on her.
But already, under the younger man’s spellbound eyes, an odd and unforeseen thing was occurring: he gradually became aware that, almost imperceptibly, the girl and the table where she sat, and the sleepy waiter who was taking her orders, were slowly moving nearer to him on a floor which was moving, too.
He had never before been in that particular restaurant, and it took him a moment or two to realise that the floor was one of those trick floors, the central part of which slowly revolves.
Her table stood on the revolving part of the floor, his upon fixed terrain; and he now beheld her moving toward him, as the circle of tables rotated on its axis,42which was the waterfall and pool in the middle of the restaurant.
A few people began to arrive—theatrical people, who are obliged to dine early. Some took seats at tables placed upon the revolving section of the floor, others preferred the outer circles, where he sat in a fixed position.
Her table was already abreast of his, with only the circular crack in the floor between them; he could easily have touched her.
As the distance began to widen between them, the girl, her gloved hands clasped in her lap, and studying the table-cloth with unseeing gaze, lifted her dark eyes—looked at him without seeing, and once more gazed through him at something invisible upon which her thoughts remained fixed—something absorbing, vital, perhaps tragic—for her face had become as colourless, now, as one of those translucent marbles, vaguely warmed by some buried vein of rose beneath the snowy surface.
Slowly she was being swept away from him—his gaze following—hers lost in concentrated abstraction.
He saw her slipping away, disappearing behind the noisy waterfall. Around him the restaurant continued to fill, slowly at first, then more rapidly after the orchestra had entered its marble gallery.
The music began with something Russian, plaintive at first, then beguiling, then noisy, savage in its brutal precision—something sinister—a trampling melody that was turning into thunder with the throb of doom all through it. And out of the vicious, Asiatic clangour, from behind the dash of too obvious waterfalls, glided the girl he had followed, now on her way toward him again, still seated at her table, still gazing at nothing out of dark, unseeing eyes.
43
It seemed to him an hour before her table approached his own again. Already she had been served by a waiter—was eating.
He became aware, then, that somebody had also served him. But he could not even pretend to eat, so preoccupied was he by her approach.
Scarcely seeming to move at all, the revolving floor was steadily drawing her table closer and closer to his. She was not looking at the strawberries which she was leisurely eating—did not lift her eyes as her table swept smoothly abreast of his.
Scarcely aware that he spoke aloud, he said:
“Nihla—Nihla Quellen!...”
Like a flash the girl wheeled in her chair to face him. She had lost all her colour. Her fork had dropped and a blood-red berry rolled over the table-cloth toward him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, flushing. “I did not mean to startle you——”
The girl did not utter a word, nor did she move; but in her dark eyes he seemed to see her every sense concentrated upon him to identify his features, made shadowy by the lighted candles behind his head.
By degrees, smoothly, silently, her table swept nearer, nearer, bringing with it her chair, her slender person, her dark, intelligent eyes, so unsmilingly and steadily intent on him.
He began to stammer:
“—Two years ago—at—the Villa Tresse d’Or—on the Seine.... And we promised to see each other—in the morning——”
She said coolly:
“My name is Thessalie Dunois. You mistake me for another.”
“No,” he said, in a low voice, “I am not mistaken.”