Her finger fell out of his buttonhole. “Oh...!” she half cried, and in
such an odd, overturned tone that, still smiling in his princely way, he
demanded: “You didn’t think I was made of money did you, little lady?”
Hurriedly Stella shook her head, a bit alarmed for just a moment lest she
had placed herself in an unfortunate light. Yet somehow she _had_ always
more or less associated Ferdinand with at least the romantic abstract
idea of money. The illusion had been established upon the occasion of her
first glimpse of him, bursting like a bright symbol into her drab life,
his hand full of travel guides. Money—not for itself, but the things it
could do and the dreams it could realize.... Her returning smile seemed
to crack a little, as her eyes, with still their faintly troubled look,
met his, then unconsciously avoided them. It was, to some indefinite
extent, a moment of readjustment for her. The evening seemed all athrill
with intangible revelation....
“Look here,” he said, a suggestion of bravado in his voice, “speaking of
Hagen’s Island and the business, you were responsible yourself, Stella,
for a whole lot of the soft pedaling.”
“I?” she asked, amazed, wondering at the drift.
His smile possessed elements of dryness. “The Captain believes to this
day you knew the essential facts beforehand. But,” and her husband
laughingly seized both her cheeks, “after that day you said you liked
having everything mysterious—well, I didn’t have the heart to break in on
any of your dreams just then....
“I see,” she said, a shade doubtfully. Her cheeks trembled a little where
his fingers had pinched.
“The Captain even tried to talk me out of getting married,” pursued King,
almost chattily. “The Captain always insisted this was a man’s job. But
that was all the good it did! Why you dear little girl,” he went on, his
tone warming and deepening to considerable passion, “how could I ever get
along without you?”
But somehow those other words of his—those words unconsciously yet so
hauntingly _impersonal_—seemed ringing in her ears instead: “—what it
would have been like if I’d come here—alone....”
“I know,” he admitted after a little pause, “time seems to lag a bit. But
after all, what’s six months?”
“Or even a year?” she bravely supplemented, catching somewhat the spirit
of his easy nonchalance.
It was, as a matter of fact, a trifle in the air: the Captain’s was a
complicated life. “If I’m not here—h’m?—by the fifteenth of August,” he
had told them, “or within a week of that time—h’m?—you’ll know I’m not to
be looked for until February again.” But they refused to be dismayed.
“Yes, even a year,” King echoed her gaily. “A year’s gone in no time. And
then,” he laughed, “if we _can’t_ stand it any longer, why off we go,
to some place more lively—maybe where we can live in a cheerful, noisy
little two-by-twice flat with a dumb waiter and—”
“But you said—the rue de la Paix,” she reminded him, a look of groping
alarm in her eyes.
“Ah, so I did.” He sighed a cheerful capitulation; and then, with an
odd effect of pulling himself together and getting romantically “under
way” once more, noisily pushed back his chair, got up, and poured out
some more brandy. “You’re right, lady-bird. I’d forgotten about the
hats. All right—it’s really quite the same. We’ll go to Paris! And after
that—perhaps the Tyrol you’re always talking about. Or—I’ve got it! We’ll
saunter up the coast of Africa, through the Suez canal, into the blue
Mediterranean. Maybe you’ll want to go on to Spain....”
He strode to a window and brushed back the mat roughly, seeming, as he
stood there, to drift miles away, while the blow outside waned, and the
jungle hushed itself beneath warm stars.
The troubled look returned to Stella’s eyes. “Oh, don’t stop—please!” she
urged. And it came to her dimly that this was really the first time she
had had, consciously, to prod his grandeur.