Chapter IX: Part I: I (9)

“Oh, do!” exclaimed Mowbray, acting on instinct, for he was too cold and too unnerved to think. “I’d like jolly well to see it myself; must be rippin’.”

The permission was given with some graciousness, and the party bowed themselves out. As they descended the grand staircase, they heard a buzz of voices behind them, as of several elderly ladies talking at once.

“We’d be roasting on red-hot coals this minute if there were any in that refrigerator,” said Ida, “but I don’t care so long as we are going to see the real part of the palace.”

An aged major domo showed them through the magnificent reception rooms, built for entertaining a proud and gorgeous aristocracy in the days when Genoa was known throughout Europe as “La Superba.” They were hung with tapestries or cordova leather, and filled with priceless pictures, porcelains, enamels, gold and silver ware, and massive furniture. Valdobia told them dramas sentimental and tragic which had been enacted within the walls of the historic house. But they had to stamp about to avoid a chill, and were glad to emerge into the warmer air of even the narrow street.

“Well,” announced Ida, as they walked rapidly out of the Via Garibaldi into the broad sunshine of the Piazza delle Fontane Marose, “if that’s a sample of your ancient aristocracy no more of it in mine. My curiosity is satisfied for good and all. Why on earth don’t they live like human beings?”

“Or steam-heated Americans?” asked Valdobia, smiling. “Console yourself with the assurance that you are the only Americans that have ever crossed that threshold.”

“It doesn’t console me one little bit, and I feel pneumonia coming on. Let’s walk as fast as we know how!” And accompanied by the willing Englishman she started off with a stride that soon left the others far behind.

“It is true,” said Valdobia disgustedly, “that this older generation does not know how to live, not in any sense. They possess the greatest wealth in Italy, and they hoard it as if poverty stared them in the face. They have only to turn on the electric lights once a week and provide a simple supper to make Genoa one of the most delightful cities in Europe, but they won’t even do that. They have the finest jewels in Italy and never wear them except on the rare occasions when the King and Queen visit Genoa and command them to the royal palace. Thank heaven there is a younger set, equally well born, that live in the new apartment houses or in those villas up on the hills, and are neither too economical nor too antiquated in their ideas to enjoy life. Those old people are divided up into intimate little sets and spend their lives gossipping about the rest of Genoa or talking of the past. But I do hope you did not take cold.”

“I didn’t, and I really enjoyed it!” said Ora, smiling mischievously. “I amused myself thinking what would happen if I told our uncomfortable hostess that my father’s sister had married a Roman relative of her husband; but I wouldn’t have relieved the situation for the world. I suppose they are fumigating themselves.”

“I don’t doubt it. They think they are aristocratic and are merely provincial.”

“How different you are!” Ora looked at him admiringly. “One hardly could believe that you belonged to the same race.”

“I don’t. I am a Roman, and a citizen of the world. No doubt you, too, have a root that runs back into the dark ages, but today is all that counts with us. I mean that in more senses than one!” And, although he smiled, he gave her a quick side-glance.

“I hope so. I am well aware that you are enjoying yourself immensely.” Ora felt it quite safe to flirt with him in the open street.

“Do you like me a little better?”

“Rather. Friendly companionship is my chief idea of happiness, now that I am more or less tired of books.”

“Is it? May it be my good fortune to initiate you into a higher! You have everything to learn!”

“Have I? I wonder!”

“What do you mean by that? Have you ever been in love?”

“Not the least little bit!”

“You said that rather too vehemently. It is my turn to wonder.” This time he looked hard at her and his face was grim. He had a way of setting his jaw that reminded her of the man whose haunting memory had made her alternately happy and miserable during many long months. She looked away hastily.

“The kind of love you mean I have not the very least knowledge of. You must believe that.”

“Of what other kind, then?”

“Oh, all women dream, you know,” she said lightly. “They have a sort of ideal that consoles them for missing the realities of life. You come quite close to it,” and once more she sparkled her eyes at him.

“I have no intention of letting you flirt with me,” said Valdobia calmly. “My flirting days are over. I shall remain the best of your friends until you love me or send me to the other end of the world.”

“Well, don’t become serious and spoil everything.”

“I shall not lose my head, if that is what you mean,” he said drily. “I find the present state of affairs very pleasant. Let us overtake the others and go for a drive.”

XXXV

“Well,” said Ora, when she and Ida had returned to the hotel to dress for dinner, “did you have a queer feeling when you were prowling through those dim old rooms, furnished three or four hundred years ago, and the scene of all sorts of romance and tragedy?”

“I had a queer feeling all right. Had visions of rheumatism, sciatica, pneumonia, and a red nose for a week. I suppose those wonderful velvet gowns they wore--in pictures, anyhow--were padded inside, and they slept in them; didn’t take them off all winter. If I lived in one of those palaces today I’d surely lose all my good American habits.”

“Didn’t you have any haunting sense of mystery--of having been there before?”

“Nixie! No wonder I murdered if I ever was. However,” she added thoughtfully, “there’s no telling what I might have felt if they’d had a furnace in the house. There was something wonderful about it, all right--being in those musty old rooms, that fairly smelt of the past. I guess they’ll haunt me as some of those Roman palaces have that are not shown to the public. But don’t put weird ideas into my head, Ora. They don’t gee with Butte. The severely practical is my lay.”

“Don’t you think there could be romance and tragedy in Butte?”

“Oh, plenty of shooting, if you mean that; and mixing-up. But people don’t stay jealous long enough to get real tragic about it; they just get a divorce. We’ve improved on daggers and poisoned bowls and rings, and the rest of it. Good old Butte!”

They all dined at the Bristol that night, and soon after nine o’clock had the smoking-room to themselves. Ida, indeed, carried Mowbray off into the reading-room. Ora sighed as she found herself alone with the handsome distinguished Roman of the type that even in minor exponents so often compelled her response. Why didn’t she love him? He was proving himself the ideal companion. There was apparently no question to which he had not given some thought, and he knew far more about the subjects that appealed to her than she did herself. They discussed the ever-fascinating sexual problems impersonally, delicately, and exhaustively, a feat in itself, an experience Ora never had enjoyed before; for while it drew them together it apparently neither disturbed Valdobia nor altered his attitude toward her. His analyses of politics and of the fashionable authors of the day were the acutest she had heard or read, and he enlarged her knowledge of the world by his anecdotes of life in the different capitals of Europe that he knew so well. He could be personal without egotism, and his sense of humour was keener than her own. While he treated her ideas and criticisms with deference he forced her to look up to him and to feel only pleasure in his masterful mind and great experience.

Tonight he made her talk about herself; and, artfully beating about her life’s most significant chapter, she expressed herself with a freedom and veracity which she found another novel and fascinating experience; her confidences to Ida were superficial and sporadic. She could feel his sympathy and understanding flow toward her, although he uttered no sentimental platitudes, and let only his eyes express a little of what he felt. But for the hour she glowed with a sense of utter companionship, her mind was stimulated to the pitch of excitement; she caught herself wishing that they could have these long intimate talks for the rest of their lives, and that he would sometimes hold her hand to complete the sense of perfect understanding.

When they parted at midnight and she walked slowly up the stairs alone--Ida had dismissed Mowbray an hour since--she sighed again. Why didn’t she feel the pull? What was the nature of that mysterious current that seemed to vibrate between two people only out of the world’s billions, and was quite independent of mental identities? Certainly passion was not the only source. If she had been free and never had met Gregory Compton she would have married Valdobia and given him all he craved; for his magnetism was by no means confined to his brain. Why could not she love him as it was? She had not been the heroine of one of those passionate love affairs that leave a woman cold for several years, perhaps for ever. The intensity of emotion she had experienced during these months in Europe had been one-sided, a mere madness of the imagination. She had yet to realise that a woman can live more profoundly and completely with a man in her imagination than when in daily contact with his discouraging weaknesses, his inability to reach her impossible standard, and impinged upon by the disintegrating forces of daily life.

Such women as Ora Blake, endowed with a certain measure of creative imagination, yet spending their maturing years unnaturalised citizens in a cross-section of life which barely brushes their aloofness in passing, develop as unnormally as those that cultivate this exotic garden of the mind for fame and fortune. If they find a mate while the imagination is still as young as their years, these highly organised women, with every sense and faculty keenly alert, and stimulated by mental contact as others may be by drugs and wine, have the opportunity at least to be the happiest beings on earth. If they marry a brute, or are forced to fight the world for bread, a wide channel is dug in the brain through which flow the normal and crowding thoughts of the average, commonplace, adaptable woman; which is perhaps the best of all educations for life.

But Ora had married a kind prosaic man who soon learned to let her alone, and kept her in a comfort that burdened her days with leisure. If she had been unimaginative no harm would have been done. She either would have grown fond of her essential husband and become a domestic angel, or consoled herself with society and bridge. But, misplaced in life, she belonged to the intellectual aristocracy of the earth, who are the loneliest of its inhabitants, unless they can establish an invisible bond with their fellow-beings by offerings from that mental garden which is at once their curse and their compensation for the doubtful gift of life.

Ora was too indifferent to the world to care to weave this gossamer bridge, and had grown accustomed to mental solitude. But she had never placed any curb on her imagination. In the days when her only solace was books it enabled her to visualise the _mise-en-scène_ of the remote or immediate past, the procession of the traveller, or the abstractions of science; as if she were in one of those theatres where the great modern manager threatens to atrophy what imagination is left in the world. It even enabled her to enjoy fiction whose scene was a land of which she had no personal knowledge; a rare gift in the American, whose demand for familiar settings and characters keeps our literature commonplace. And she could at will shut her eyes and wander in Europe when Butte became insufferable.

Her surrender to the obsession of Gregory Compton had been gradual; she had fought it, not only out of loyalty to her husband and her friend, but because the future menaced terrors against which she had no desire to pit her strength. But she had finally cast defiance to the future, and dismissed her phantom loyalty with a shrug. Mark no doubt had consoled himself for her defection long since; to Ida a husband was a money-maker pure and simple. She herself would never see Gregory Compton again if she could avoid it; or, if life took her inevitably back to Butte, no doubt her infatuation would have been cured by mental satiety, and she would be able to greet him with the indifference that is ever the portion of the discarded lover.

Having arrived at this reasonable conclusion, she had dismissed cynicism, cowardice, and qualms, to limbo, and entered upon one of those exalting, tormenting, incredibly sweet, and profoundly depressing mental love affairs, which, lacking the element of comedy inevitable in all actual relations between men and women, obsess the mind and detach it from life.

After she parted from Valdobia, puzzled and wistful, she recalled one week during which she had been completely happy. Ida was visiting friends uncongenial to herself, and she had gone alone to Bruges. In that ancient city of almost perfect beauty, she had given the wildness in her nature uninterrupted liberty. She had written letters that no woman yet has sent to a man without regretting it, for in this stage of man’s progress, at least, he wants little of the soul of woman. It is possible that the women who live in their imaginations are the most fortunate, after all, for they arbitrarily make man the perfect mate he possibly may be some centuries hence. At all events Ora imagined Gregory Compton with her unremittingly, deliberately ignoring the depression that must descend upon her when once more companioned by his wife. It had seemed to her that her step had never been so buoyant, her body so light. People had paused to stare at the beautiful young American with her head in the air looking as if she were about to sing. It had been a wonderful, an almost incredible experience, and she never had been able quite to recapture it even when alone in the night. But she had wondered sometimes if life held any happiness as real as that had been, and she wondered again as she switched off her light and flung herself into the bed that had witnessed so much despair before Valdobia had appeared and put a quietus on her imagination. She wondered also if the passion of the soul were so much greater than the common experience of man and woman that its indulgence must forever make life itself unreal. She felt that this question threw some light on her problem, then dismissed the subject peremptorily. She might regret that extraordinary love affair, with its terrors and its delights, but she would bury it once for all; and she fell asleep with the wise remark:

“What fools we are! Oh, lord, what fools!”

XXXVI

After this she discarded what was left of her crust, and emerged like a butterfly. The present was delightful, she would enjoy it without analysis or retrospect. She met several clever and interesting men, but had eyes for no one but Valdobia. They explored Genoa until they knew it almost as well as the natives, spending hours down in the long twisted streets, so narrow that no vehicle had ever visited them, and swarming like the inside of an anthill. Harrowing adventures were impossible, for the Genoese masses if discourteous are neither a lawless nor an impertinent race. Ora and Ida might have roamed alone, and been unmolested save by the enterprising shopkeepers that dealt in filigree. They rode over the steep hills in the trams, and took long motor drives in the brilliant winter sunshine to the picturesque towns and villages down the Riviera. Then, on a Saturday morning, they bade good-bye to the ancient city and took the train for Monte Carlo.

The girls established themselves in a small hotel opposite the Casino Gardens, the men in the great hotel that lies between the Casino and the International Sporting Club.

“I suppose we really should have sent for Lady Gower,” said Ora, doubtfully, as they hooked each other up for dinner. “It’s stretching the point rather to come to a place like Monte Carlo with two men. We’ll be sure to run into a dozen people we know.”

“Oh, bother! I love the idea of feeling real devilish for once. Besides, anything goes at Monte Carlo, and everybody is interested in gambling and nothing else. What good would old Norfolk-Howard do us, anyhow, asleep on a sofa. She never could keep awake after ten, and nobody’d know in those big rooms whether she was there or not. We’re Americans, anyhow, and I’m having the time of my life. Lord John is a perfect dear.”

“Well, at least I am thankful that you are no longer in a hurry to return to Butte.”

“Butte’ll keep, I guess. The more experiences I take back the more they’ll think of me. Gives me backbone to feel a real woman-of-the-world. Besides, kid, it’s good philosophy to drink the passing moment dry. Amalgamated may bust us any minute. You look prettier every day, and I’m not going off either.”

She wore a severely cut gown of black velvet, the corsage draped with coral-coloured chiffon. Her first evening gowns, cut by the ruthless Parisian, had caused her many qualms but they had been growing more _décolleté_ ever since; and so superb were her neck and shoulders that she had ceased to regret her lack of jewels. Ora had refrained from buying any, although she longed for sapphires; but she always wore her pearls. Tonight her gown was of a misty pale green material from which she rose like a lily from its calyx. She still wore her hair massed softly on the top of her head, and although not as tall as Ida, and far from being as fully developed, was an equally arresting figure. No two women were ever more excellent foils, and that may have been one secret of their amicable relations.

They dined with their cavaliers at one of the fashionable restaurants, then, after an hour in the Casino rooms, which were not at all to their taste, with their ornate walls and dingy crowd, went by means of lifts and underground corridors over to the International Sporting Club. Valdobia and Mowbray had put them up at this exclusive resort during the afternoon and they entered the roulette rooms at once. Here the walls were chastely hung with pale grey satin, and all the colour was in the company. The long tables were crowded with smart-looking men and women of both worlds, although only the ladies that had stepped down from ancestral halls dared to show a grey hair or a wrinkle. The cocottes were so young and fresh as well as beautiful that to Ora and Ida they looked much like girls of their own class. All, young and old, were splendidly dressed and bejewelled; and if there was excitement in their brains there was no evidence of it in their calm or animated faces. They might have been a great house-party amusing themselves with some new and innocuous game.

Our party walked about for a time dividing their attention between the spinning balls, the faces of the players, and the gowns of the women; even those of the cocottes were not eccentric, although worn with a certain inimitable style. Their ropes of pearls were also the longest in the room. A number of the most notable men in Europe were present, princes of reigning houses, and statesmen high in the service of their country.

In spite of the absence of that feverish excitement which is supposed to pervade these gambling rooms of Monte Carlo (and which is absent from the Casino even when a man shoots himself and is whisked out), Ora wandered about in a curious state of exaltation. The cool splendour of the rooms, the atmosphere of high breeding and restraint, the gratification of the æsthetic sense at every turn, the beauty of the women and the distinguished appearance of the men made it a romantic and memorable scene. Notwithstanding the constant clink of gold, the monotonous admonitions of the croupiers, it was a sort of worldly fairyland, this apotheosis of one of the most perilous of human indulgences. These people might be gambling for greed or mere excitement, being blasé of other mundane diversions, but they were at the same time so frank and so reserved, so pleased and so indifferent, that they produced the illusion of sojourning on a plane high above the common mortal with his commonplace loves and disasters and struggles to exist or shine. No wonder that men came here to forget the burdens of state, women Society’s conservatisms or the inconstancy of man. For the hour, and the hour generally lasted until four in the morning, they lived in a world apart, and a duchess sat next to a cocotte with a serene indifference that amounted almost to democracy.

“I don’t know that romantic is the word I should use,” said Valdobia, laughing; Ora had uttered some of her thoughts aloud; “but I think I know what you mean. The people that come here can afford to lose; their minds are almost as carefully composed as their costumes; they are both pleasantly reckless and frivolous; this is their real play-time; the world beyond these four walls is obliterated; if they lose they shrug their shoulders, and if they win they experience something like a real thrill; in short, being soaked in worldliness, it is their only chance to feel primitive--for gambling was practised by the most ancient tribes of which we have any knowledge. At the Casino most of those people are subconsciously wondering how they are going to pay their hotel bills and get out of Monte Carlo, calm as they manage to look; but here--well, here you see the quintessence of the world’s frivolity. No wonder it creates a heady atmosphere. Do you want to gamble?”

“Of course I do.”

“Well, put a louis on the red. I’ll follow your stakes. Perhaps we’ll bring each other luck.”

They staked and won, staked and won again, seven times running without removing their winnings from the red. Then Valdobia said, “Don’t tempt fortune too far. The luck may turn to the green any moment. Suppose we try ours _en plein_.” He selected the number 39, and once more they won. Ora, her hands full of gold, turned to him with blazing eyes. Her cheeks were crimson. Valdobia laughed.

“You mustn’t look so happy,” he said teasingly, “or these old stagers will know that you are what your friend calls a hayseed. Better change all this gold into notes.”

“Notes? I want my gold. Paper never did mean anything to me.”

“What a child you are--ah! I must leave you for a moment. The Duc----” he mentioned a prince of his royal house--“wishes to speak to me. Don’t try _en plein_ again. That rarely happens twice. Put a louis at a time on the red.”

He left her. Ora deliberately placed not only her double handful of gold on the red, but pushed forward the pile that had accumulated before her. Red came up and doubled her winnings. She added to her already imposing hillock the gold shoved toward her, and, with a quick glance at Valdobia, who was deep in conversation with his prince, took a thousand franc note from her châtelaine bag and laid it on top of the gold. Once more she won, and met the sympathetic smiles of the croupiers, who in the Sporting Club, at least, are very human persons. She was about to add another thousand franc note, when Valdobia returned. He swept her gold and notes off the red just as _rien ne va plus_ sounded above the buzz of conversation behind the tables.

“What on earth are you doing?” he asked angrily. “I don’t like to see a woman gamble like that.”

Ora pouted and looked like a naughty child.

“But I want to gamble. Give me my money. What have you to say about it?”

“I brought you here--and I shall not bring you again if you are going to gamble like that old Frankfurt banker over there. Why not follow the example of Mrs. Compton, who is decorously putting five franc pieces on the green at the next table?”

“Oh, Ida! I like the sensation of doing big things. You just said we enjoyed letting loose our primitive instincts.”

“Is that the way you felt? Well, here are three louis. Stake one at a time. I shall change the rest into notes and give them to you at the hotel.”

He kept his eye on her, and she staked her gold pieces one after another and lost.

“Now,” he said, “come into the bar and have a glass of wine or a lemon squash. I want to talk to you.”

They found seats in a corner of the bar behind a little table, and Ora demurely ordered a lemonade. “I suppose you are going to scold me,” she murmured, although her cheeks were still flushed and her eyes rebellious. “What difference did it make? I am not poor, and I had won nearly all that I risked, anyhow. You have seen women gamble all your life. One would think that you were a hayseed, yourself.”

“Shall I be quite honest? I fancy I was jealous. For the first time I saw you completely carried away. I had hoped to furnish that impulse myself!”

“It is a wonderful sensation,” she said provokingly. “I doubt if anything but gambling could inspire it.”

“Do you?” But he knew that it was no time for sentiment, and asked curiously, “Are you so fond of gold? I never saw such a greedy little thing.”

“Remember I’ve walked round over gold for the best part of my life, and have a mine of my own. It fascinates me, but not because I care much about riches--I like the liberty that plenty of money gives; that, to my mind, is all that wealth means. But I loved the feeling of being possessed, of being absolutely reckless. I should have liked to know that my whole fortune depended upon that spinning ball. That would have been worth while! It makes one forget everything--everything!”

He looked at her with half-closed eyes. “You have a secret chapter in your life,” he said. “Some day I shall read it. But I can’t make up my mind whether you are a born gambler or not.”

Ora shrugged her shoulders. “To tell you the truth I shouldn’t care if I never saw a gambling table again. I have had the sensation. That is enough. I will admit I was rather disappointed not to lose that immense stake. Lucky at cards, you know.”

“And you think you are unlucky in love?” Valdobia laughed, but his face was still grim. “How many men have you had in love with you already?”

“That doesn’t count!”

He turned pale. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that I don’t believe I am destined to happiness. Don’t you think we know our lines instinctively?”

“I know that you are trying to torment me. You are still excited and angry, so I shall not permit your words, significant as they are, to keep me awake tonight.” He was smiling again, but she saw the anger in his own eyes, and said impulsively:

“I rather like you better than usual tonight. You have made me do something I didn’t want to do, and anger is becoming to you.”

“The eternal female! Well, God knows, I wouldn’t have you abnormal. What is this?”

A page was standing before the table with a telegram in his hand. “Pour M. le Marquis de Valdobia,” he said.

With a word of apology Valdobia opened the telegram. Ora, watching him, saw his face turn white.

“What is it?” she asked anxiously. “I do hope it is not bad news.” She felt a sharp pang at the possibility of losing him.

He rose and looked at his watch. “My mother is very ill,” he said. “A train goes in an hour and ten minutes. I must take it. But there is something I want to say to you before I go; I may be detained in Rome. Will you get your wrap and come into the gardens for a few moments?”

“I am so sorry,” murmured Ora, with real sympathy. “Of course I will go.”

He took her to the cloak-room. “Wait here for a moment,” he said. “I must telephone to my man to pack and meet me at the train; and tell Mowbray not to look for us later.”

He left her, and Ora watched the passing couples, trying not to think. She was a little frightened, but still too excited to shrink from a possible ordeal.

XXXVII

He returned in a few moments, and they left the Club House by the main entrance and strolled toward the gardens; then he suddenly led her to the terrace. There were many people walking in the tropical scented park of the Casino, but the digue above the Mediterranean was deserted. Monte Carlo can be cold in May but it can be as warm as July in February, and the night was mild and beautiful. The sea under the stars was almost as blue as by day. The air was very still, although a band was playing somewhere, far away. From the other side of the bay came the faint humming of an aeroplane. There was to be an aviation meet on the morrow, and no doubt one of the airmen was about to make a trial flight.

They sat down on one of the benches, and Valdobia folded his arms, then turned and leaned his elbow on the back of the seat and his head on his hand.

“I am not quite in the mood for love-making,” he said, “after the news I have received; but I can’t go without letting you know why I followed you to Genoa--without some sort of an understanding.”

Ora looked at him out of the corner of her eye. His face was set and determined, but she concluded that he was not the man to be dangerous when grieving for his mother.

“What is it?” she asked softly. “I know, of course, that you--like me.”

“I love you, and I want to marry you. I wish you to divorce your husband and marry me. Don’t give me your final answer now,” he continued, as Ora interrupted him. “It is not a question to decide in a moment. But while I am gone think it over. You do not love your husband. I know all your arguments from your friend. She made them when I first gave her my confidence. They don’t weigh with me for a moment. You will never spend your life with that man, good as he may be. As for obligations, you discharged them long ago. I can make you happy, and I believe that you know I can.”

“I don’t know.” Ora, stunned for a moment, felt thrilled and breathless. “Oh, I don’t know!”

“I have begun to feel sure that you have loved another man, or fancied that you loved him. Would it be possible for you to marry him if you divorced your husband?”

Ora hesitated, then answered, “No.”

“Why is he not your lover?”

“That would be impossible, even if I would do such a thing, and you know I would not.”

He gave a sharp sigh of relief. “I _felt_ that he had not been. Why is it impossible?”

“There are complications. I cannot explain them. But he could not be less to me if he were dead.”

“Does he love you?”

Ora hesitated again. “I have sometimes felt--no, of course, it is impossible. I let my imagination run away with me, that was all.”

“You mean that he never told you--that he doesn’t write to you?”

“I met him only once, and I have never seen his handwriting.”

“Well, dismiss him from your mind. You have imagination and have dreamed, because your demands upon life are very great, greater than you know; and oddly enough, considering your opportunities, fruition has eluded you. But the time has come for you to live; and you could live!”

Ora looked down at her hands. They were ungloved and looked very white and small. Valdobia suddenly covered them with one of his own, and bent his face close to hers. She saw that he had forgotten his mother, and gave a little gasp.

“Ora!” he said. “Don’t you know how happy I could make you? I not only could teach you love, of which you know nothing, but we could always be companions, and you are the loneliest little creature I have ever met.”

To her astonishment she saw two tears splash on his hand, and winking rapidly discovered that they had fallen from her own eyes. As she would have detested to see a man cry, she melted further, and whispered,

“Oh, yes, life with you would be very delightful. I know that. I fancy the other man, even if I could marry him, would make me miserable. He--American men that amount to anything give their wives very little of themselves.”

“And you would be lonelier still! I have known American women that loved their busy husbands--that _seeking_ type. They interested me, poor things--rushing madly about trying to fill their lives. If you join that sisterhood it will kill you. I am not an idler, for I have business interests to which I devote a certain amount of time, but I have leisure, and I not only should give you the companionship you have craved all your life, but I can offer you the world in all its variety. Now dismiss this man, whoever he is, from your mind. Even were I beside the question, it is your duty to yourself as a woman of character, not a sentimental schoolgirl.”

“Yes, that is true.”

“That sort of thing is morbid, besides being quite beneath a woman of pride and dignity. But women often romance about some dream-hero until they have found the right man. Can you doubt that I am the man for you? You were made for Europe, not for America, and for a man that can give you everything--everything!”

“Yes, I know.” She moved restlessly. “If I could only feel just one thing more for you! I hardly know what to call it--I like you better than anyone in the world. I almost love you. Why don’t I?” Her voice was suddenly full of passion and she clasped both of her hands about his own. “If you could only make me, I should worship you.”

He glanced about rapidly. They were quite alone. He put his arm round her and she felt it vibrate. His face was flushed and his breath short. She could feel his heart thumping against her head, and she was fascinated for more reasons than one: she knew that it was many years since any woman had roused him to strong emotion, and it was the first great passion that had ever been close to her save in her stormy imagination. She was enthralled for a moment, and some of the wildness in her own nature stirred. But it was too soon, she must have time to think. She cast about desperately and found her inspiration.

“We have been here a long time!” she said hurriedly. “You will miss your train. Your mother may be very ill.”

He dropped his arm, and stood up.

“You are a woman of infinite resource,” he said. “And no little cruelty. Will you consider what I have asked you--seriously?”

His anger as well as his power to control himself always fascinated her, and she also experienced a spasm of contrition. She rose and gave him her hand; her eyes were frank and kind.

“Yes,” she said. “I will consider it, and think of you always--and miss you horribly. Will you telegraph to me every day?”

“Two or three times a day, probably. And don’t think I am really angry with you. If you are cruel it is only because you don’t understand. I am glad that you do not, for it is only women that have loved greatly that have forgotten how to be cruel. Come. I must take you to your hotel.”

PART II