On the threshold of his father's model garage Corrie stopped, surveying
the scene presented in the centre of the huge, lofty stone room, bare
except for the five automobiles ranged around and their countless
appurtenances disposed upon walls and shelves.
"Excuse me, but when did you two last wash?" he jeered.
The two men beside the Mercury racing car looked up at the figure in the
sunny doorway.
"I don't care to try to prove that I ever did," returned Gerard. "The
evidence is against me. But Rupert had his beauty bath this morning, all
right. You're looking rather disarranged, yourself; perhaps the course
was a trifle dusty."
They laughed silently across at one another. The trim garments of all
three men were gray with dust and oil, their faces were streaked and
spotted with the caked road-soil. There was little difference in color
between Gerard's brown ripples of hair, Corrie's blonde locks and the
black head of the mechanician who bent over the motor.
"If this is practice work, _what_ is the race going to be like?"
speculated Corrie, dragging off his gauntlets. The recent
speed-exhilaration was still heavily upon him; as with his sister, the
darker shading of brows and lashes always gave his fair-tinted face a
warm vividness of expression. "The course is in fierce shape, already. I
say--why did you especially warn me that the road wouldn't be fit for
fast going until to-morrow, then get out in your own machine and break
all practice records for the fastest lap? Trying to keep me out of your
way, or to break your neck and Rupert's?"
"The first, certainly," Gerard asserted. "Really, I didn't mean to do
any speeding to-day, Corrie, but when I saw the white road ahead,
I--think something slipped."
"You're a cheerful hypocrite, all right. Here, catch, baseballist!"
Gerard retreated a step and deftly caught the dripping missile as it
hurtled across the garage.
"You ought to wring out your league sponges," he reproved. "Thanks; I
was wondering how I could take this face into the house, unless I got
Rupert to turn the hose on me. You see, I might meet some one."
"You'd meet Flavia," Corrie declared, busying himself with his own
ablutions. "She's out there in the flowing arbor, sewing some gimcrack
thing and pretending she hasn't been worrying because I was out on the
course. She comes downstairs every morning to see me start--you know
that--and then sits around all day watching until I come in again. None
of that for Isabel; she's a sport."
Gerard shook the water from his thick hair and finished the perfunctory
toilet without replying. But as he passed Rupert, he dropped a light
hand on the mechanician's shoulder.
"When you marry, Jack Rupert, will the girl be a sport?" he questioned.
"My wedding cards ain't paining me bad just now."
"Well, but suppose the case."
The black eyes lifted for a moment from the task in hand.
"I guess I'd be sport enough for one house," Rupert impassively
pronounced. "I hate a crowd."
Gerard nodded to the boy across the garage, his face gleaming into
mirth.
"Coals to Newcastle," he signified. "Everyone doesn't like to live
shop."
There was the splashing thud of an overturned bucket. As Gerard passed
out the door, Corrie overtook him.
"Gerard," he panted, "Gerard, you said that purposely! You meant to tell
me that--that Isabel--that you----"
Gerard regarded him quietly, a little smile curving his lips.
"You meant to tell me that I needn't worry about you and Isabel; that
you've seen I want her, and you won't cut in? You meant that?"
The smile crept to Gerard's eyes, but he remained mute. With a quick
breath Corrie grasped his companion's hand and squeezed it ardently.
"You're _big_, Allan Gerard. And kind. For I've been watching, these ten
days, and you could get her if you tried."
He turned back into the building before contradiction was possible.
After a moment, Gerard went on down the path between the althea bushes.
The "flowing arbor" of Corrie's description was a decorative masterpiece
of Mr. Rose's own design; a large, pink marble fountain, surrounded by a
pink-columned arcade strewn with rugs and cushions. Whatever its
architectural faults, it was a fairy-tale place of gurgling water and
soft shadows, shot through with the tints of silver spray, rosy stone
and deep green turf. Flavia was seated here, in the summer-warm
sunshine of early October that had succeeded the storms of the previous
week, a long strip of varicolored embroidery lying across her lap and
the overfed Persian kitten nestling against her light gown.
"Corrie is home," Gerard announced, pausing in one of the arched
openings. "But I suppose you saw him come in, from here."
The young girl lifted to him the frank welcome of her glance and smile,
with their pathetic shade of hostess dignity.
"I saw you both come in," she confirmed. "One sees a great deal from
this watch-tower. But it is good of you to tell me; you know how glad I
am when he is back. Will you not rest before you go into the house?
Corrie always comes here first; to gather strength, he says, to climb
the terrace steps."
"I am not fit," he deprecated. "I would soil your purple with my dust
and poison, your Venetian atmosphere with gasoline fumes."
"Corrie does it."
"Corrie is privileged. The first time I ever saw you, you were watching
Corrie. You made me feel that I lived in a barn."
"A----"
"A blank, impersonal, vacant set of rooms. A house where, if I were
brought in on a shutter, there would be no one except the undertaker to
pull down the shades."
Flavia winced, shocked out of her calm.
"Please do not! I--please do not say those things."
"There, you see. I do not even know how to talk to you properly. It
doesn't worry me to think about just dying and I forgot that other
people dislike the subject. Now, it was living that made me envy Corrie
and feel melancholy."
Flavia drew the silk thread with slow accuracy. Her pulses were
commencing to beat heavy strokes, she dared not raise her troubled eyes
to the dominant, self-possessed man opposite. There was a pause.
"In novels," Gerard mused, "when a man sees the woman who locks the
wheels of his fancy, he drops everything else and follows her until he
gets--his answer. But in real life we're pretty stupid; we let
circumstances interfere, or we don't quite realize what has happened to
us, we don't do the right thing, anyway. Sometimes we're lucky enough to
get another chance. If we do----"
The gush and ripple of the fountain, the rustle of the broad-leaved
lilies as the changing breeze sent the spray pattering across them;
filled pleasantly the lapses of his leisurely speech. Flavia was
acutely conscious of his steady gaze upon her bent head, and the
unhurried certainty with which he was moving toward his chosen goal.
Only, what was that goal? She remembered Isabel's sureness of her own
attraction, Isabel's deliberate monopoly of Gerard's attention whenever
possible during the last ten days, and Corrie's assertion that his
cousin was "just the kind of girl Gerard would like." Yet, he was saying
this to her, Flavia. And suddenly she was almost sure of what she never
had dared imagine.
She had no thought that Gerard might be hesitating in uncertain humility
before the delicate maidenhood that invested her like a fine atmosphere
forbidding approach. She was not even dimly aware that her averted face
controlled to soft impassivity, the intent gaze on her work which veiled
her eyes beneath their heavy lashes, the regular movement of her slender
fingers as she sewed, conveyed an impression of unmoved serenity that
might have quelled a vainer man than Allan Gerard. Yet it was so, and he
temporized; not knowing that for her there were three people in the
arcade, the third Isabel, and not daring to continue his broken
sentence.
"I have been wondering if you ever translated your name," he remarked,
when silence verged on embarrassment. "I have wondered many times if it
were just chance that called you so."
"My Mother was Flavia Corwin; I am named for her. What does it mean?"
she answered, surprised.
Just for an instant she looked at him, and in the one encounter of
glances innocently undid all her reserve had built up. Gerard's color
ran up under his clear skin like a girl's, brilliant-eyed, he took a
step into the arcade.
"It's too late in the season to tell you out here," he demurred. "I'll
send you the translation this evening, if I may. There's something else
I'd like to tell you, but I've got to find some civilized clothing,
first. Essex lost his head for approaching the Queen in his
riding-dress, and I'm risking more. I----"
"Hurry up, you two!" hailed Corrie's injured voice, the ring of his step
sounded in the stone arcade. "It's six o'clock now. Come on in."
"I'll come," Gerard answered the summons, again his warm, sparkling gaze
caught and held Flavia's as, startled, she raised her head. "I was
telling Miss Rose that I must get rid of this road dust. But I wasn't
thinking of eating, then."
Scarlet rushed over Flavia's face and neck. As Corrie took gay
possession of Gerard and bore him off, she sank back in her chair,
winding her fingers hard into the embroidery. Not the omnivorous
Isabel's, this! There was nothing to fear, ever again. She had the
perfect certainty that Gerard would complete that purpose of his the
next time they met. And they would meet in an hour. Suddenly she caught
up the drowsy kitten and hid her face against the soft living toy.
They did meet in an hour, but it was on the way to dinner, and the
exuberant Corrie held the reins of conversation.
"I've discharged Dean," was his first announcement. "Take those oysters
away from in front of me, Perkins; I want my soup right now and a lot of
it--about a gallon. Never mind anyone else; I haven't had anything but
sandwiches since breakfast."
"Discharged your mechanician one day before the race?" marvelled Gerard.
"What will you do?"
"Oh, I'm going out to the garage after dinner to hire him over again.
He's used to it. Now, I suppose that if you fired Jack Rupert, you'd
never see him again."
"I certainly would not."
"Well, that's the difference. I'm afraid of Rupert, myself. Dean hasn't
any dignity."
"Neither have you," observed Isabel bitingly. "You're worse than Dean. I
saw you kick Frederick the Great all across the veranda yesterday, then
lead him around the kitchen and feed him porterhouse steak."
"That was remorse," Mr. Rose suggested, coolly amused. He looked across
at Gerard, as at the only other grown person present. "You'd best take a
porterhouse steak to Dean when you go, Corwin B. It's a fine temper
you've got."
"All right, sir, if you say it. I guess Dean would eat a porterhouse, if
he isn't a Great Dane puppy. But I saw a man to-day in a temper that
makes anything I ever did read like a chapter from Patient Griselda."
"He must have been a lunatic," Isabel kindly inferred.
Her cousin put his elbows on the table and contemplated her with mock
reproach; looking rather nearer his sixteenth year than his nineteenth
in this mood of effervescent gayety. Ever since his interview with
Gerard, in the garage that afternoon, his high spirits had been
unquenchable.
"You're cross, Isabel," he stated frankly. "Where did you get the
grouch? That's a stunning purple frock you've got on."
"It isn't, it's mauve," corrected Isabel, but she smiled and smoothed a
chiffon ruffle. "Who was your man, then, Corrie?"
"He was the French driver of the Bluette car, and he came into the
judges' stand to make a complaint against another fellow who wouldn't
give him the road. Kept getting in front, you know, whenever the Bluette
wanted to pass, and cutting it off so it had to fall behind. He was in a
French calm, all right, and I don't wonder. But I don't believe anyone
could really carry it through, could they, Gerard?"
Gerard roused himself from his study of Flavia, as she sat in her
ivory-tinted lace gown at the foot of the table, her small head bent
under its weight of gleaming fair hair. The massively handsome room,
with its rich hues of gilded leather, mellow Eastern rugs and hangings,
carved wood and glinting metal, enchanted him as a background for her
dainty youth as if he had never seen it there before or might again. It
was difficult for him to look away.
"Carry it through?" he repeated. "Of course, easily."
"Not with some drivers! Not with me!"
"Why not?"
"Because I wouldn't stand it. Because I'd drive through the car ahead if
it tried to keep me back. Oh, I'd have them out of my way--you're
_laughing_ at me, Allan Gerard!"
Gerard was certainly laughing, and the others with him.
"If I were Dean, I wouldn't wait to be fired, Corrie; I'd resign," he
rallied. "Some day I'll challenge you to a game of auto tag, and show
you that trick."
"You can't; I'd get by," Corrie retorted, his violet-blue eyes afire
with excitement.
"Instead of you two fighting about that nonsense, you might take me
around the course in one of your cars," Isabel remarked gloomily. "I've
asked you often enough."
"You'll not do that," Mr. Rose pronounced with decision. "It's not fit
and I won't have it. And I'm tired of hearing you sulk at Corrie and
Gerard because they've got the sense to say no. You'll keep out of the
racing cars and off the race track, my girl. Flavia, if you don't make
your brother stop eating nuts, he'll be ashamed to meet a squirrel in
the woods."
There was open mutiny in the glance Isabel darted at her uncle, but she
said nothing. Mr. Rose was not contradicted in his own house by anyone.
"Nuts agree with me, sir," Corrie protested, aggrieved. "Besides, I
feel as if I had to celebrate somehow; I have had such a bully day." He
leaned back in his chair, turning to Gerard his gaze of shining
acknowledgment and measureless content. "I don't think I ever spent such
an all-round good old day, just all right all through. I shall have to
tie a gold medal on the calendar, or mark it with a white stone, or----"
"Or drop a pearl in the vase of Al-Mansor," Gerard suggested. His own
feelings were not very far removed from Corrie's, that night.
"What is that?" Isabel questioned. "I never heard that story. What is
the vase of Al-Mansor?"
"A legend of the days of the caliphs. If you care about it, some day I
will find a copy to send."
"Some day! I want to hear it now."
"Tell us, with all the trimmings," Corrie urged, "No sliding around the
flowery parts and cutting scenes, but the full performance. Flavia loves
that sort of thing, too; she and I grew up on the Arabian Nights and
Byron and Irving. We dramatized 'The Fall of Granada,' for the toy
theatre, but Bulwer was dead, so it didn't matter.
"Perkins, up in my den you'll find a five-pound box of Turkish Delight,
sent to-night from the candy shop; bring it here to help the Oriental
atmosphere."
Flavia looked up, and Gerard caught her eyes, no longer quite untroubled
before his own.
"What a set of comparisons to face," he deprecated. "Shall I dare it,
Miss Rose?"
"Would you leave us to suffer all the pangs of unsatisfied curiosity?"
she wondered. "To dream all night of elusive pearls that disappear in
their vase as Cleopatra's in her goblet of vinegar?"
Mr. Rose took a cigar and a match, nodding humorously at his guest.
"You're in for it," he signified. "Better get it over."
"And no cutting," exacted Corrie, _sotto voce_.
"Very well, then; pray imagine yourselves in the bazaar, and remember
this isn't my fault," Gerard submitted. He paused, assembling his
recollections. "On ascending the throne at Bagdad, in the full noon of
the glory of the caliphs; it is told that Al-Mamoun, the son of
Haroun-al-Raschid, the great-grandson of Al-Mansor, received from the
former vizier a small golden vase.
"'Lord of the East, newly-risen Sun of the true believers,' said the
vizier, 'your great-grandfather of venerated memory caused to be made
this vase, proposing to place therein a pearl for every day of perfect
happiness he should pass. And when he received the vase from the
goldsmith, he complained that the vase was too small. But, alas, the
mighty Al-Mansor died without ever putting in a single pearl, for the
day when the vase came home he learned that his loved sultana plotted
against his life.
"'After many years, in his turn came to rule your illustrious father,
Haroun the Wise, and took the vase. He, the great king, who never
travelled without a hundred scholars in his train, who built a school
for poor children beside every mosque, he the magnificent in war and
peace, in all his long reign enriched the vase by two pearls; the day of
his coronation and the day of his death; the day before he saw Marida
the Beautiful and the day he forgot her forever. Now, Commander of the
Faithful, according to my charge I deliver the vase to you, with hope
that your joys may exhaust the sea of pearls.'
"Hearing, Al-Mamoun fell into profound musing.
"'Vizier,' he said, 'I cannot mark the day I began to reign, who loved
my father and take his place with tears, and the day of my death no man
knows. But, by the favor of Allah, I will add one pearl to the vase
while I live.'
"The next morning many workmen came to the palace. Around the fairest
part of the garden they reared a lofty wall, within its circle they
placed everything which the king might desire. On the day appointed, in
that spot assembled his favorite musicians, the scholars in whose
conversation he most delighted, the captains whose faces reminded him of
victories and the poets whose words fell like drops from the spring that
bubbles before Allah's throne in Paradise. Only, because women had
troubled the days of Al-Mansor and Haroun, no woman was admitted.
"With pomp, music and rejoicing, Al-Mamoun moved at sunrise to the
garden of delights that was to shelter him from the world for one day.
But, as his foot touched the threshold, a great cry of lamentation went
through the palace.
"'What now?' demanded the king, halting.
"A guard of the serail answered, his brow in the dust:
"'Lord, the sultana has drowned herself in the Court of Fountains,
because of grief that your day of perfect happiness could be passed
without her.'
"Then Al-Mamoun drew back his foot and returned to the palace, knowing
that from him the golden vase would claim no pearls."
"That is all?" Isabel asked expectantly.
"What more could there be, mademoiselle?"
"There might be a moral," Corrie suggested, leaning his folded arms on
the table, his interested eyes fixed upon the story-teller.
"When I read the Arabian Nights, I found out that Oriental tales have no
morals," dryly observed Mr. Rose. "A man who had been brought up with
the Blarney Stone for a teething-ring once sold me an unexpurgated
edition de luxe, with illustrations, so I ought to know."
"I never saw it, sir!"
"No, Corwin B., you did not. You can if you want to, by coming down to
my office, where it is still lying in the packing-box it came in. I
don't think you want to. Gerard's story isn't there."
"Its moral seems to be that women are a nuisance," Isabel commented, her
manner injured.
"That would not be a moral, it would be a falsehood," Gerard demurred.
"No, I fancy the moral might be, do not challenge Fate to a duel. Are
you considering our nonsense, Miss Rose?"
"I was thinking of the story," Flavia amended. "I was wondering if the
kings would not soon have filled the vase had they been content to mark
each happy hour, and whether a wise treasurer of happiness would not
find a vase filled with seed-pearls where they found a vase empty."
"Exactly! You have found the secret, no doubt. Moral: do not ask too
much."
"A day too much?" marvelled Corrie. "Why, I expect a lifetime!" He flung
back his head, looking around the smiling circle. "Well, why not? What's
a lifetime, anyhow? Not half enough to get all the fun there is in
living, as long as you do no harm by it. And who wants to do any harm
when there is so much else to do? Not anyone in his right mind. Anyway,
I've got to-day's pearl canned, and _it_ can't get away. And I can think
of lots of others I've had, if I could go back for them."
"Shall I guess the name of Al-Mansor's vase?" Flavia asked, as she rose.
She was smiling, but her cheeks were flushed and her serious eyes
caressed her brother. "It was Memory, I think. And, no, Corrie, the
pearls put there cannot be lost."
The extreme warmth of the day had continued into the evening. As Isabel
followed Flavia across the hall, Corrie overtook his cousin, wound a
scarf around her bare shoulders and lured her out on the veranda. She
yielded not unwillingly, contrary to her recent custom of neglecting
him, and they disappeared together. Any such latent project of Gerard's
was prevented by Mr. Rose's mood for chat, a mood not usual for him.
"You are not looking much like the driver I met on the way home,
to-day," he informed his guest, surveying Gerard quizzically, when they
were established in the drawing-room. "But I didn't recognize my own
son, for that matter. He don't seem like mine, when he's out in those
goblin clothes driving like Satan in a hurry. It's sensible enough for
you, being in the automobile trade, but for him it's just fool play."
"He does it a little too well to call it that," Gerard returned
seriously.
"Yes? Well, I've got money enough to pay for it--although it's the most
expensive game he's found yet--or for anything else he fancies. I've
told him to amuse himself for a while. He is too young to settle down to
work, when there is no need for it. I never had any playing time, and I
want to see him have his. And he has earned it, too; I suppose he told
you he was through college?"
"Yes, and amazed me."
"He knew it had to be done, so he did it quickly and without any
nonsense. It's an old theory that given liberty and money, a boy will go
to ruin. I never believed it; I don't yet. And I never saw why I should
make my son a different set of living rules from those I make for
myself. Of course, I don't mean there was no law in the house; I don't
think I spoiled Corrie. But I've left him pretty free, only bidding him
keep straight. That I must have, and he knows it. He has got to keep
straight."
A sudden grate like metal on metal roughened the deliberate speech with
a suggestion of grim inflexibility. Flavia lifted vaguely startled eyes
to her father.
"I don't believe you need to worry about that," reassured Gerard
smiling. The echo of Corrie's fresh young tones was in their ears, as he
disputed with his cousin, outside the windows at the end of the room.
"I guess not. He's too much like his mother." Mr. Rose dropped his hand
on Flavia's, as she sat in her low chair beside him. "And she was what
they call an aristocrat, nowadays, but I called a lady when I married
her. Old family, gentle breeding, the society end, and good looks like
my little girl's that seem too fine to touch; she had all and everything
except money. And I gave her that."
Flavia leaned nearer to her father with the caressing confidence in
mutual affection which marked all the household intercourse and pervaded
the gorgeous pink villa like an actual fragrance of atmosphere.
"I gave her that. She liked to spend it. Not," his keen eyes suddenly
sprang challengingly to the other man's, "Not that she married me for
money. Don't think it. My wife loved me. I guess I struck her family
like a cyclone; I was self-made and used to my own way, at thirty, and
not uglier than my neighbors. Mrs. Tom Rose was a happy woman, until she
died, when Corrie was two years old and Flavia four." He rose bruskly
and crossed the room. "You don't smoke, Gerard? I always spoil a cigar
when I talk."
"I don't unless there's something wrong," Gerard answered, tactfully
casual. "A cigarette helps, then. But everything is very right, now. You
know, these races are my holidays, although they are an important
business feature, too. My factory affairs keep me hard at work most of
the year. Then in the intervals I am designing and having constructed a
genuine racing machine of my own, much more powerful than the ninety
Mercury I'm driving now. I'm not an idle citizen, really."
Flavia's head drooped lower. He was telling her father these things as
part of that steady purpose whose object she felt herself; she knew it,
clairvoyantly acute.
"You get a lot out of living," commented Mr. Rose, coming back to his
seat. "You enjoy it, I'm thinking."
"Yes, I do," Gerard replied candidly. "Why not?"
"You're right. Now, I want to tell you about a deal I put through in the
Street, to-day."
Flavia moved to the piano and began to touch the keys. She knew there
would be only men's talk for a while, and from this place she could
watch Gerard unseen. In all the previous days she had avoided this,
refusing to take cognizance of the physical beauty upon which Isabel
dilated, half-unconsciously defending herself from an undefined danger.
She commenced to play pastel-toned bits of Nevin and Chaminade, her
clear eyes delighting in free vision.
Out on the veranda, Corrie was sustaining a defense of his own. Upright
against a column, scarlet with determination, Isabel pursued the wilful
desire she had voiced at the dinner-table.
"That Frenchwoman was around the course with her husband, yesterday,"
she urged. "Other women have done it before. Why won't you take me?"
"You might get hurt. Father never would let you."
"He needn't know, stupid. You don't want to, that's all. I'll ask Mr.
Gerard; he'll like to take me."
The poison had been drawn from that sting, but Corrie winced,
nevertheless.
"I _want_ you, Isabel. I love you."
"You're a boy; I'm a year older than you."
"Eleven months!"
"Anyhow, I'm a woman. I do what I choose, while you're afraid to move
for fear uncle will catch you. What would he do, ferule your little
palms?"
Furious, Corrie sprang across and dropped his hands on her shoulders
with the freedom of their life-long intercourse.
"I'd like to ferule yours," he gritted between his set teeth. "I'm as
much a man as you are a woman. You haven't any _sense_. And there's no
use of your dangling after Allan Gerard, for he don't want you--he said
as much. I'm going in, and I won't take you around the course."
Gasping, Isabel let him reach the French windows of the drawing-room
before recovering herself. Then she rushed in pursuit, tripping
impatiently over her long chiffon skirts.
"Corrie--wait! Corrie!"
He turned sullenly, secretly aghast at his own temerity. But Isabel laid
her hand on his sleeve without anger.
"You're more man than I thought," she breathed. "I always liked you
better than anyone else, anyhow. Corrie, if you'd take me around the
course, early in the morning when no one here knew, I believe you'd be
almost grown up enough to--to--be engaged."
"Isabel!" he cried, fire kindling in his face. "You would? You would?"
"If I get my ride----"
He seized her, boy-clumsily, and boy-like lavished his impetuous kisses.
"You'll get anything," he promised, half-choked by excitement. "And
everything. Oh, Isabel!"
Flavia's delicate music flowed on and on. Before Mr. Rose had finished
his discussion, Corrie and Isabel entered the room, and the evening
ended without any possibility of Gerard's resuming the theme commenced
in the fountain arcade.
When the group separated for the night, Corrie detained his sister at
the foot of the wide, gleaming stairs.
"Don't rise early in the morning to give me my coffee, Other Fellow," he
said. "I shan't be starting for the course at the usual time. I have
been working pretty steadily and I need to rest for the race itself, day
after to-morrow."
She leaned across the bannister to him; the two young faces framed in
young ripples of bright hair resembled each other very strongly in their
twin moods of exaltation and radiant, half-incredulous happiness.
"You do not feel unwell, dear? You have not driven too much?"
"Not a bit. But I'm sleepy," he caught a frond of a tall Madeiran fern
that was placed in its jardiniere on the step opposite him, winding the
satin-green strip over his finger, "honestly, all in with sleepiness,
and I'm going to sleep to-night as if it was the last quiet night's
sleep I'd ever get. See you to-morrow, kid sister."
"Good-night, dearest."
So, since she was not to give Corrie his morning coffee, she would not
give Gerard's to him or see him until his return from the race course.
As a matter of course, it was not to be contemplated that she should
rise at dawn for a tete-a-tete breakfast with the guest, at this period
when all the fine elements that composed their relation hesitated at the
point of crystallization. But she scarcely regretted the postponed
interview. It would be better to meet each other differently, at more
leisure. He would come again to the fountain arcade, where she watched
for Corrie's return.
When Flavia reached her own room, there stood on her dressing-table a
long silver-paper and filigree box. Wondering, she raised the lid, to be
met with a gust of exquisite perfume and confronted with a mass of frail
yellow roses, lovely with the quaint, virginal beauty of suggestion that
separates them from all their other-colored kin. Across the glistening
petals lay a cover cut from a pocket dictionary, bearing written upon it
one sentence: "Definition of the meaning of Flavia Rose."
She laid her head beside the flowers, gold upon gold. She, also, the
fancy came to her, had placed this day in the vase of Al-Mansor. But the
day to come outshone it, as a rosy pearl one merely white.
"To-morrow," she whispered to herself. "To-morrow."