After supper they sat about the table in the garden until nine o’clock,
the men and several of the women smoking; and there was much talk of
art, of books, of travel, gossip of the studios, of politics. Until the
day before it had been a party grown intimate through the association of
several weeks, and to-night, at this their third meal, the three
Americans and the Englishman glided insensibly into the circle. It was a
new society for all of them, and they were interested according to their
respective bias.
Rothe was somewhat surprised to find that untidy artists could yet be
gentlemen not to say men. His wife felt a sympathetic interest in the
individual, and wondered if all these nice people were very poor and
what their particular form of poverty was like; she had never come
across artists in her charities. She longed vaguely to help them in some
way without giving offence. And then she envied them their illusions,
their faith, their enthusiasm, and wondered if the fount of eternal
youth from which these endowments flowed washed from apprehension the
everlasting pettiness of mortal life. Over was always interested when he
was not bored, and Catalina pulsated with curiosity and thanked Heaven
anew for her deliverance from the Moultons. She had spent the afternoon
reading to Mrs. Rothe, then had taken a nap, ignoring Over’s existence.
But she sat opposite him at the table and looked very pretty in the
candle-light, her arms extended, her hands clasped, her lithe body
erect, her attitude one of absolute repose; the eyes, only, smiled
occasionally above the serenity of the rest of her face. Once both she
and Over became conscious that they had drifted from the conversation
and were listening to the nightingales singing in the park beyond the
wall. He met her eyes with a flash in his own, but she flashed defiance
in response, and turned her attention to the German artist who was
disputing hotly with the Frenchman, pounding the table and apoplectic
with excitement. Miss Holmes with her admirable skill calmed the raging
waters and scattered them into various channels. She was in white
to-night with a black silk scarf about her shoulders and one end over
her abundant fair hair; and the eyes of her devotees rarely left her
face. The prince actually had arrived in the afternoon, and occupied the
place of honor beside her, although she had contrived that Over should
sit on her left; and she had played them against each other—or thought
she had—throughout the evening.
The prince was a thick-set, melancholy looking man of middle years who
had some reputation for historical research, a position of solid
respectability wherever he went, and a turn for severe economy. His
inconsiderable power to add to the gayety of the world was further
depressed by the sense of his folly in falling in love with a penniless
girl, but he glowered across at Over and resolved anew to win her if
they had to rusticate on his meagre estate for the rest of their lives.
She was the only woman who had ever lifted the weight from his spirit,
made him forget for a moment the contemptible condition into which,
through no fault of his, his ancient family had fallen. If it had not
been for this condition it is possible that he might long since have
turned his back on the temptation of the American girl, for he held
republics in such scorn that he would not have hesitated to break faith
with the citizen of an illegitimate nation, as one wholly outside his
code of honor and inherited sense of conduct. But this girl had brought
sweetness into his life and he was grateful to her, and in his manner
loved her.
She had considered him in her clear-eyed fashion, had pictured herself
as his companion, well loved, no doubt, and with the entrée to the best
intellectual society on the Continent; but she knew him to be far more
selfish than any man she had ever met, and with a pride which, no matter
how he might love and admire her, would never permit him to forget that
he was a prince and she a plebeian; it is only just to add that she
might have belonged to the flower of American aristocracy and he would
have made no distinction. It was always a risk for an American woman to
marry a European aristocrat with his uncontrollable sense of social
superiority not only over the inhabitants of the United States of
America, but over those of every other nation but his own; and to marry
one who took life seriously and was as poor as a church mouse was
nothing short of foolhardy. But a prince was a prince, even if he were
not the head of his family, and to become an indisputable princess was a
great temptation to the self-made American girl—had been until she met
Over. Now she would have sacrificed a prince of the blood with a
malachite mine in Russia.
She had made herself very charming to Over throughout the evening,
drawing him out, showing him to the others at his best, and he had been
somewhat stimulated by the dull glow in the black, opaque eyes opposite.
As they separated to dress for the party he asked Catalina once more to
give him the initial dance, and when she refused, positively, he
immediately and eagerly asked the same favor of Miss Holmes. After a
moment’s sprightly thought and hesitation he was gratified.
Like most Englishmen of his class he was fond of dancing, although he
regarded it as a sort of poetical exercise, and on the whole preferred
golf; and one good dancer was much the same to him as another. He was
far too practical to feel any desire to hold a particular girl in his
arms in a public room where other men held other girls in conventional
embrace; but this Catalina could not know, and ran up to her room angry
and hurt.
Nevertheless, she dressed herself with elaborate care in an evening gown
recently made in Paris, a white chiffon spangled with gold. It revealed
the slim roundness of her neck and arms, and clasped her beautiful
figure like mere drapery on a statue. She put a white rose on either
side of the mass of hair she always wore low on her neck and found a
long scarf of golden tissue to protect her when the night grew chill.
When she joined the others in the sala there was a murmur of admiration,
rising high among the artists, which she received with absolute
stolidity. Over came forward at once.
“What next?” he murmured. “You surpass my expectations. I can say no
more than that. But you must put that scarf about your shoulders
directly you go out or you will take cold.”
“Practical Englishman! I never had a cold in my life.”
“Wonderful young person! Put it on at once. We are starting.”
Miss Holmes looked like a lorelei with an American education, in pale
green. Her sister was draped in sage green, and the other artist of her
sex in red and yellow Spanish shawls. Mrs. Rothe wore an elaborate blue
gown with an air of doing the occasion all the honor possible. Over,
Rothe, and the prince wore the conventional evening dress; the foreign
artists were in their velvet jackets, with the one exception of the
German, who had got himself up in the property costume of a Spanish
grandee.
Miss Holmes draped a white lace shawl about her head and shoulders.
“Come!” she said. “It is time to start.” And she led the way down the
dark street with her prince. She was to dance many times with Over, and
amiably gave the brief interval to the admirer who was much too serious
for even the stately quadrille.
Over and Catalina brought up in the rear. She drew close to him with a
little shiver.
“I still have that sense of being watched,” she said. “I can’t
understand why I should be so silly as to notice it. I am usually afraid
of nothing—never had a nerve before.” But she did understand, and
resented. Over had roused and quickened all her femininity, and she
longed for his protection, wondered at her former boy-like indifference
to sympathy as to peril.
Over drew her hand through his arm. “It may be nothing and it may mean a
good deal. Mind you do not wander off by yourself in the palace. If you
do I shall be hunting for you, and that will spoil my evening. This
dance has upset our plans, but we must have a stroll together through
some of those old courts and corridors before the party breaks up.”