Langbourne fell asleep so quickly that he was aware of no moment of
waking after his head touched the fragrant pillow. He woke so much
refreshed by his first sound, soft sleep that he thought it must be
nearly morning. He got his watch into a ray of the moonlight and made
out that it was only a little after midnight, and he perceived that it
must have been the sound of low murmuring voices and broken laughter in
the next room which had wakened him. But he was rather glad to have been
roused to a sense of his absolute comfort, and he turned unresentfully
to sleep again. All his heaviness of heart was gone; he felt curiously
glad and young; he had somehow forgiven the wrong he had suffered and
the wrong he had done. The subdued murmuring went on in the next room,
and he kept himself awake to enjoy it for a while. Then he let himself
go, and drifted away into gulfs of slumber, where, suddenly, he seemed
to strike against something, and started up in bed.
A laugh came from the next room. It was not muffled, as before, but
frank and clear. It was woman's laughter, and Langbourne easily inferred
girlhood as well as womanhood from it. His neighbors must have come by
the late train, and they had probably begun to talk as soon as they got
into their room. He imagined their having spoken low at first for fear
of disturbing some one, and then, in their forgetfulness, or their
belief that there was no one near, allowed themselves greater freedom.
There were survivals of their earlier caution at times, when their
voices sank so low as scarcely to be heard; then there was a break from
it when they rose clearly distinguishable from each other. They were
never so distinct that he could make out what was said; but each voice
unmistakably conveyed character.
Friendship between girls is never equal; they may equally love each
other, but one must worship and one must suffer worship. Langbourne read
the differing temperaments necessary to this relation in the differing
voices. That which bore mastery was a low, thick murmur, coming from
deep in the throat, and flowing out in a steady stream of indescribable
coaxing and drolling. The owner of that voice had imagination and humor
which could charm with absolute control her companion's lighter nature,
as it betrayed itself in a gay tinkle of amusement and a succession of
nervous whispers. Langbourne did not wonder at her subjection; with the
first sounds of that rich, tender voice, he had fallen under its spell
too; and he listened intensely, trying to make out some phrase, some
word, some syllable. But the talk kept its sub-audible flow, and he had
to content himself as he could with the sound of the voice.
As he lay eavesdropping with all his might he tried to construct an
image of the two girls from their voices. The one with the crystalline
laugh was little and lithe, quick in movement, of a mobile face, with
gray eyes and fair hair; the other was tall and pale, with full, blue
eyes and a regular face, and lips that trembled with humor; very demure
and yet very honest; very shy and yet very frank; there was something
almost mannish in her essential honesty; there was nothing of feminine
coquetry in her, though everything of feminine charm. She was a girl who
looked like her father, Langbourne perceived with a flash of divination.
She dressed simply in dark blue, and her hair was of a dark mahogany
color. The smaller girl wore light gray checks or stripes, and the
shades of silver.
The talk began to be less continuous in the next room, from which there
came the sound of sighs and yawns, and then of mingled laughter at
these. Then the talk ran unbrokenly on for a while, and again dropped
into laughs that recognized the drowse creeping upon the talkers.
Suddenly it stopped altogether, and left Langbourne, as he felt,
definitively awake for the rest of the night.
He had received an impression which he could not fully analyze. With
some inner sense he kept hearing that voice, low and deep, and rich with
whimsical suggestion. Its owner must have a strange, complex nature,
which would perpetually provoke and satisfy. Her companionship would be
as easy and reasonable as a man's, while it had the charm of a woman's.
At the moment it seemed to him that life without this companionship
would be something poorer and thinner than he had yet known, and that he
could not endure to forego it. Somehow he must manage to see the girl
and make her acquaintance. He did not know how it could be contrived,
but it could certainly be contrived, and he began to dramatize their
meeting on these various terms. It was interesting and it was
delightful, and it always came, in its safe impossibility, to his
telling her that he loved her, and to her consenting to be his wife. He
resolved to take no chance of losing her, but to remain awake, and
somehow see her before she could leave the hotel in the morning. The
resolution gave him calm; he felt that the affair so far was settled.
Suddenly he started from his pillow; and again he heard that mellow
laugh, warm and rich as the cooing of doves on sunlit eaves. The sun was
shining through the crevices of his window-blinds; he looked at his
watch; it was half-past eight. The sound of fluttering skirts and flying
feet in the corridor shook his heart. A voice, the voice of the mellow
laugh, called as if to some one on the stairs, "I must have put it in my
bag. It doesn't matter, anyway."
He hurried on his clothes, in the vain hope of finding his late
neighbors at breakfast; but before he had finished dressing he heard
wheels before the veranda below, and he saw the hotel barge drive away,
as if to the station. There were two passengers in it; two women, whose
faces were hidden by the fringe of the barge-roof, but whose slender
figures showed themselves from their necks down. It seemed to him that
one was tall and slight, and the other slight and little.