Chapter XI: A Meeting and a Parting

The next day was full of activities which kept the house guests far afield. But Mary Alice had an exciting day at home; for the King had spoken to the Duchess about her and asked to have her presented to him that evening.

The Duke and Duchess had spent a fortune on the entertainment of their King; had provided for his beguiling every costly diversion that could be thought of. But they had not been able to give him anything new, and they felt that he was enduring the visit amiably rather than actually enjoying it. It remained, apparently, for the Girl from Nowhere to give him real pleasure.

So the Duchess--secretly sympathetic--left orders with her French maid that Mary Alice was to be made ready to see the King.

Mary Alice chose the simplest thing that rigorous French maid would allow and kept as close as possible to her own individual and unpretending style. But even then, she was a pretty resplendent young person as she stole timidly down to find the Duchess and be presented to the King.

The guests were assembled in the great drawing-room, and Mary Alice was frightened almost to death when she saw the splendour of the scene and realized what part she had to play in it.

Then, in a daze, she was swept forward and presented, and found herself looking into eyes that smiled as with an old friendliness. So she smiled back again, and soon forgot the onlookers, answering His Majesty's kindly questions.

He turned from her, presently, to speak to some one else, and Mary Alice caught sight then of a face she knew. For an instant, she stood staring. For an instant, he stood staring back, as unbelieving as she.

Then, "You seem to be on friendly terms with His Majesty," he said. "Have you showed him how to play the game, too?"

"No," Mary Alice answered, "but I've told him the Secret."

As soon as they could, they escaped--those two--out on to the terrace where the stars were shining thickly overhead.

"On one of those--those times in New York when we talked together," he said, "you told me that when something very marvellous had happened to you and you couldn't believe you were awake, that it was really true, you asked your Godmother to pinch you. It--er, wouldn't be at all proper for me to ask you to please pinch me. But if you know any perfectly proper equivalent, I wish you'd do it."

"I've pinched myself," she returned, "and it seems I am awake. So I judge you must be, too."

"Then how, please----?"

And she told him.

"And you don't know yet who I am?"

"No."

So he told her. "I warned you it was nothing interesting," he said; "it is just my work that people are interested in. I don't belong in there," indicating the great house, "any more than you do. They like me for a novelty, because I've dared and suffered; and because, as things turned out, I was in a position to do what they are pleased to call a great service to the Empire. I wish I liked them better--they want to be very kind to me, and I was born of them, so they like me the better for that. But I've been in the wilderness too much--I can't get used to these strange folk at home."

"I used to think I couldn't get used to strange folk," Mary Alice murmured, "but I seem to have got on fairly well for a girl from Nowhere."

"Was it the Secret?"

She nodded.

"When may I know?"

"I--I can't tell."

"You told the King."

"He seemed to need it so."

"Don't I need it?"

"I--I can't tell."

He seemed discouraged, and as if he did not know what next to say. They strolled in silence over to where she had been standing the night before when the King spoke to her. From within the great house came the entrancingly sweet song of a world-famous soprano engaged to pour her liquid notes before the King.

Mary Alice stood very still, drinking it in. When it ceased, she stole a look up at the bronzed face beside her; the light from a window in her far wing of the house fell full on that rugged face, and it looked very stern but also very sad. Mary Alice's heart, which had been exultant only a short while ago, began suddenly--in one of those strange revulsions which all hearts know--to ache indefinably. This hour would probably be like those other brief hours in which he had shared her life. To-morrow, or next day, he would be gone; and forever and forever the memory of these moments on the terrace, with the stars overhead and that exquisite song in their ears, would be coming back to taunt her unbearably.

She made up her mind that before he went out of her life again, she would tell him the Secret; so that at least, wherever he went, however far from him the rest of her way through life might lie, they would always have that thought in common; and whenever it came to help him, as it must, he would think of her.

Timidly she laid a hand upon his arm. He had been far away, following the trail of long, long thoughts, and her touch recalled him sharply.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I--I want to tell you the Secret."

"I don't think I want to know," he answered, rather shortly.

"Why--why----" Mary Alice faltered. Her lips quivered and her eyes began to fill. "I--I must go in," she said.

He put out a hand to detain her, but either she did not see it in the dark, or else she eluded it; for in a moment she was gone, across the terrace towards the lighted French windows of the rooms of state.

How she managed to get through those next few minutes until she could find the Duchess and ask to be excused, Mary Alice never knew. All of her that was capable of feeling or caring about anything seemed to have left this part of her that wore the Duchess's lovely white gown and scarf of silver tissue, and to be out on the dark terrace under the pale star beams, with a tall young man who spoke bitterly. This girl in the sheen of white and silver to whom the King was speaking kindly, was some one unreal and ghostly who acted like a real live girl, but was not.

As she hurried along the great corridors towards her room in the far wing, Mary Alice felt that she could hardly wait to get off these trappings of state; to get back to her old simple self again and bury her head in her pillow and cry and cry. She wished with all her heart for Godmother. But most of all she was sick for home, for Mother, and the unchanging sitting-room.

"He" had seemed disappointed to find her here. And she----? Well! she was sorry she had seen him. In New York, where she had not even known his name, he had seemed to belong to her, in a way, by right of their common sympathy and understanding. Here, among all these people who were his people, who delighted to honour him, he seemed completely lost to her. . . .

After a weary while, Mary Alice got up and sat by the window, looking across to the main part of the great house and wondering which of the darkened windows was his and if he had dismissed her easily from his mind and gone comfortably to sleep. The early dawn breeze was blowing from the sea when she dozed into a brief, dream-troubled sleep.