She waited, then asked me in a mocking voice whether there was anything
further that worried me.
"I was merely wondering," said I, "who it was that awoke King Ferdinand
to-night by trying the knob on his bedroom door."
"Michael!"
"Well?"
"Do you mean to be insulting?"
I went over to her and coolly seated myself on the stair upon which her
feet rested.
"Thusis," said I, "I'm just worried about you. That's all."
"Will you give me a single sensible reason, Michael, why you should be
worried about me?"
"Yes. That fat Bulgarian keeps two big automatic guns under his pillow.
And he's a physical poltroon. And you can never tell what a coward may
do in a panic."
Her eyes were fastened on me all the while I was speaking but her
expression remained inscrutable.
As I ended, however, it changed subtly.
"And--_that_ is what worries you," she said in an altered voice,--a
voice so winningly sweet that I scarcely recognized it for the gay,
engaging, bantering voice I knew so well.
Then Thusis rose, and I stood up on the step below her.
"You funny boy," she said, "you mustn't worry about me."
"Does it surprise you?"
She laughed under her breath.
"Nothing surprises me any more, Michael. I am past being astonished at
anything--at my own behavior, at yours. You wouldn't understand me if I
say that, ordinarily, this rather improper costume of mine wouldn't
embarrass me."
"You mean," said I, "that the social difference between us leaves you
indifferent to me as a man?"
She bit her lip, looked at me with a flushed, distressed little smile.
"Yes, I meant that."
I nodded: "The indifference of a bathing princess to the slaves who
stand beside her litter."
"It was--that way with me--once," she said, wincing, but still smiling
through the color that surged in her face. "You would wish me to be
honest with you, wouldn't you, Michael?"
"Certainly. And tell me, Thusis, who are you who condescend to converse
with a plain republican? And what democratic whim has possessed you to
so unbend?"
"Michael!"
"Yes?"
"You are mocking me!"
"But at least," said I, "you are a princess in camouflage--I don't mean
a Russian one----"
She turned scarlet with anger and I saw her teeth busy at her under lip
again.
"Piffle," said I. "You take yourself too seriously, Thusis. Whatever
else you are you're the young girl with whom I'm in love--deeply in
love. And I'm going to tell you so, and love you with all my might, and
worry over you, and pursue you with advice and devotion until you make
yourself too impossible."
"And--then?" she demanded in a voice strangled with rage.
"Then," said I, "if you really prove to be too idiotic and impossible, I
shall stroll on until I encounter the next."
"Next--what?" The fury in her voice scared me, but I pulled myself
together.
"Next girl," said I flippantly. "You know, Thusis, there _are_ others."
She stood like a statue for a moment. Then:
"This," she whispered, "is what I ought to have expected for lowering
myself! ... I invited it--this affront----"
"Piffle," said I, "you know in your heart I'd sooner blow my bally
brains out than affront you. Why say such things? Why pretend to
yourself? You know well enough that I'm so head over heels in love with
you that I don't know what I say----"
"_I_ do!" she retorted in a white heat. "And I've got to listen to
it--I'm obliged to listen to--to an insolent inferior----"
"I'm not your inferior."
"You are!"
"Why, you silly, unhappy little thing," said I, "what if you are some
funny sort of princess--some pretty highness of the Balkans? Literature
is full of them, and if you'd read a little fiction you'd learn that
they all marry ordinary, untitled young men like me."
"Must I listen to such outrageous insults?" she demanded, standing up
very straight and slender in her offended pride, and forgetting that her
bare feet under her nightie became the more visible the straighter she
drew herself--lovely, snowy little naked feet as slim and delicate as
the pedal extremities of a perfectly moral and early Victorian
Bacchante.
"Am I to stand here and endure this insolence from you?" she repeated,
her gray eyes ablaze.
"Not at all," said I. "You can always go upstairs to bed, Thusis."
Angry tears glittered in her eyes, not quenching their dangerous
brightness, however. But I was now as mad as she was.
"Do you suppose," said I, "that this world war, this overwhelming
disaster that is razing hill and city to one horrible and bloody
level--this cataclysm which is obliterating the very contours of the
world God made--is not also going to level such flimsy structures as the
social structure?--such artificial protuberances as elevation of rank?
I tell you, Thusis, that mankind will emerge naked and equal from this
blood-deluge. You and I, too, are going to come out of it--if we do
come out--not what our ancestors thought they were, but what we actually
are! Very possibly, in generations gone with buried years, some
doddering potentate may have managed to beget some ancestor of yours.
"What of it? Who cares to-day?--outside of the Huns and their barbarian
allies? Who cares what you call yourself, I say? Who in God's name
will care to-morrow? Do you imagine that the peoples who, like Christ,
have descended into hell, can come out of those flames without the
tinsel of rank being burned off? Do you suppose anything can remain
except pure metal?"