"Thessalie Dunois! This is charming of you!" said Barres, crossing the
studio swiftly and taking her hand in both of his.
"I'm so glad to see you, Garry--" she looked past him across the
studio at Dulcie, and her voice died out for a moment. "Who is that
girl?" she enquired under her breath.
"I'll present you----"
"Wait. _Who_ is she?"
"Dulcie Soane----"
"_Soane?_"
"Yes. I'll tell you about her later----"
"In a moment, Garry." Thessalie looked across the room at the girl for
a second or two longer, then turned a troubled, preoccupied gaze on
Barres. "Have you a letter from me? I posted it last night."
"Not yet."
The doorbell rang. He could hear more guests entering the corridor
beyond. A faint smile--the forced smile of courage--altered
Thessalie's features now, until it became a fixed and pretty mask.
"Contrive to give me a moment alone with you this evening," she
whispered. "My need is great, Garry."
"Whenever you say! Now?"
"No. I want to talk to that young girl first."
They walked over to where Dulcie stood by the piano, silent and
self-possessed.
"Thessa," he said, "this is Miss Soane, who graduated from high school
to-day, and in whose honour I am giving this little party." And to
Dulcie he said: "Miss Dunois and I were friends when I lived in
France. Please tell her about your picture, which you and I are
doing." He turned as he finished speaking, and went forward to welcome
Esme Trenor and Damaris Souval, who happened to arrive together.
"Oh, the cunning little girl over there!" exclaimed the tall and
lovely Damaris, greeting Barres with cordial, outstretched hands.
"Where did you find such an engaging little thing?"
"You don't recognise her?" he asked, amused.
"I? No. Should I?"
"She's Dulcie Soane, the girl at the desk down-stairs!" said Barres,
delighted. "This is her party. She has just graduated from high
school, and she----"
"Belongs to Barres," interrupted Esme Trenor in his drawling voice.
"Unusual, isn't she, Damaris?--logical anatomy, ornamental, vague
development; nice lines, not obvious--like yours, Damaris," he added
impudently. Then waving his lank hand with its over-polished nails: "I
like the indefinite accented with one ripping value. Look at that
hair!--lac and burnt orange rubbed in, smeared, then wiped off with
the thumb! You follow the intention, Barres?"
"You talk too much, Esme," interrupted Damaris tartly. "Who is that
lovely being talking to the little Soane girl, Garry?"
"A friend of my Paris days--Thessalie Dunois----" Again he checked
himself to turn and greet Corot Mandel, subtle creator and director of
exotic spectacles--another tall and rather heavily built man, with a
mop of black and shiny hair, a monocle, and sanguine features slightly
oriental.
With Corot Mandel had come Elsena Helmund--an attractive woman of
thoroughbred origin and formal environment, and apparently fed up with
both. For she frankly preferred "grades" to "registered stock," and
she prowled through every art and theatrical purlieu from the Mews to
Westchester, in eternal and unquiet search for an antidote to the
sex-ennui which she erroneously believed to be an intellectual
necessity for self-expression.
"Who is that winning child with red hair?" she enquired, nodding
informal recognition to the other guests, whom she already knew.
"Don't tell me," she added, elevating a quizzing glass and staring at
Dulcie, "that this engaging infant has a history already! It isn't
possible, with that April smile in her child eyes!"
"You bet she hasn't a history, Elsena," said Barres, frowning;
"and I'll see that she doesn't begin one as long as she's in my
neighbourhood."
Corot Mandel, who had been heavily inspecting Dulcie through his
monocle, now stood twirling it by its frayed and greasy cord:
"I could do something for her--unless she's particularly yours,
Barres?" he suggested. "I've seldom seen a better type in New York."
"You idiot. Don't you recognise her? She's Dulcie Soane! You could
have picked her yourself if you'd had any flaire."
"Oh, hell," murmured Mandel, disgusted. "And I thought I possessed
flaire. Your private property, I suppose?" he added sourly.
"Absolutely. Keep off!"
"Watch me," murmured Corot Mandel, with a wry face, as they moved
forward to join the others and be presented to the little guest of the
evening.
Westmore came in at the same moment--a short, blond, vigorous young
man, who knew everybody except Thessalie, and proceeded to smash the
ice in characteristic fashion:
"Dulcie! You beautiful child! How are you, duckey?"--catching her by
both hands,--"a little salute for Nunky? Yes?"--kissing her heartily
on both cheeks. "I've a gift for you in my overcoat pocket. We'll
sneak out and get it after dinner!" He gave her hands a hearty
squeeze, turned to the others: "I ought to have been Miss Soane's
godfather. So I appointed myself as such. Where are the cocktails,
Garry?"
Road-to-ruin cocktails were served--frosted orange juice for Dulcie.
Everybody drank her health. Then Aristocrates gracefully condescended
to announce dinner. And Barres took out Dulcie, her arm resting light
as a snowflake on his sleeve.
There were flowers everywhere in the dining-room; table, buffet,
curtains, lustres were gay with early blossoms, exhaling the haunting
scent of spring.
"Do you like it, Dulcie?" he whispered.
She merely turned and looked at him, quite unable to speak, and he
laughed at her brilliant eyes and flushed cheeks, and, dropping his
right hand, squeezed hers.
"It's your party, Sweetness--all yours! You must have a good time
every minute!" And he turned, still smiling, to Thessalie Dunois on
his left:
"It's quite wonderful, Thessa, to have you here--to be actually seated
beside you at my own table. I shall not let you slip away from me
again, you enchanting ghost!--and leave me with a dislocated heart."
"Garry, that sounds almost sentimental. We're not, you know."
"How do I know? You never gave me a chance to be sentimental."
She laughed mirthlessly:
"Never gave you a chance? And our brief but headlong career together,
monsieur? What was it but a continuous cataract of chances?"
"But we were laughing our silly heads off every minute! I had no
opportunity."
That seemed to amuse her and awaken the ever-latent humour in her.
"Opportunity," she observed demurely, "should be created and taken,
not shyly awaited with eyes rolled upward and a sucked thumb."
They both laughed outright. Her colour rose; the old humorous
challenge was in her eyes again; the subtle mask was already slipping
from her features, revealing them in all their charming recklessness.
"You know my creed," she said; "to go forward--laugh--and accept what
Destiny sends you--still laughing!" Her smile altered again, became,
for a moment, strange and vague. "God knows that is what I am doing
to-night," she murmured, lifting her slim glass, in which the gush of
sunny bubbles caught the candlelight. "To Destiny--whatever it may be!
Drink with me, Garry!"
Around them the chatter and vivacity increased, as Damaris ended a
duel of wit with Westmore and prepared for battle with Corot Mandel.
Everybody seemed to be irresponsibly loquacious except Dulcie, who sat
between Barres and Esme Trenor, a silent, smiling, reserved little
listener. For Barres was still conversationally involved with
Thessalie, and Esme Trenor, languid and detached, being entirely
ignored by Damaris, whom he had taken out, awaited his own proper
modicum of worship from his silent little neighbour on his left--which
tribute he took for granted was his sacred due, and which, hitherto,
he had invariably received from woman.
But nobody seemed to be inclined to worship; Damaris scarcely deigned
to notice him, his impudence, perhaps, still rankling. Thessalie,
laughingly engaged with Barres, remained oblivious to the fashionable
portrait painter. As for Elsena Helmund, that youthful matron was
busily pretending to comprehend Corot Mandel's covert orientalisms,
and secretly wondering whether they were, perhaps, as improper as
Westmore kept whispering to her they were, urging her to pick up her
skirts and run.
Esme Trenor permitted a few weary but slightly disturbed glances to
rest on Dulcie from time to time, but made no effort to entertain
her.
And she, on her part, evinced no symptoms of worshipping him. And all
the while he was thinking to himself:
"Can this be the janitor's daughter? Is she the same rather soiled,
impersonal child whom I scarcely ever noticed--the thin, immature,
negligible little drudge with a head full of bobbed red hair?"
His lack of vision, of finer discernment, deeply annoyed him. Her lack
of inclination to worship him, now that she had the God-sent
opportunity, irritated him.
"The silly little bounder," he thought, "how can she sit beside me
without timidly venturing to entertain me?"
He stole another profoundly annoyed glance at Dulcie. The child was
certainly beautiful--a slim, lovely, sensitive thing of qualities so
delicate that the painter of pretty women became even more surprised
and chagrined that it had taken Barres to discover this desirable girl
in the silent, shabby child of Larry Soane.
Presently he lurched part way toward her in his chair, and looked at
her with bored but patronising encouragement.
"Talk to me," he said languidly.
Dulcie turned and looked at him out of uninterested grey eyes.
"What?" she said.
"Talk to me," he repeated pettishly.
"Talk to yourself," retorted Dulcie, and turned again to listen to the
gay nonsense which Damaris and Westmore were exchanging amid peals of
general laughter.
But Esme Trenor was thunderstruck. A deep and painful colour stained
his pallid features. Never before had mortal woman so flouted him. It
was unthinkable. It really wouldn't do. There must be some explanation
for this young girl's monstrous attitude toward offered opportunity.
"I say," he insisted, still very red, "are you bashful, by any
chance?"
Dulcie slowly turned toward him again:
"Sometimes I am bashful; not now."
"Oh. Then wouldn't you like to talk to me?"
"I don't think so."
"Fancy! And why not, Dulcie?"
"Because I haven't anything to say to you."
"Dear child, that is the incentive to all conversation--lack of
anything to say. You should practise the art of saying nothing
politely."
"_You_ should have practised it enough to say good morning to me
during these last five years," said Dulcie gravely.
"Oh, I say! You're rather severe, you know! You were just a little
thing running about underfoot!--I'm sorry you feel angry----"
"I do not. But how can I have anything to talk to you about, Mr.
Trenor, when you have never even noticed me all these years, although
often I have handed you your keys and your letters."
"It was quite stupid of me. I'm sorry. But a man, you see, doesn't
notice children----"
"Some men do."
"You mean Mr. Barres! That _is_ unkind. Why rub it in, Dulcie? I'm
rather an interesting fellow, after all."
"Are you?" she asked absently.
Her honest indifference to him was perfectly apparent to Esme Trenor.
This would never do. She must be subdued, made sane, disciplined!
"Do you know," he drawled, leaning lankly nearer, dropping both arms
on the cloth, and fixing his heavy-lidded eyes intensely on her,"--do
you know--do you guess, perhaps, why I never spoke to you in all these
years?"
"You did not trouble yourself to speak to me, I imagine."
"You are wrong. I was _afraid_!" And he stared at her pallidly.
"Afraid?" she repeated, puzzled.
He leaned nearer, confidential, sad:
"Shall I tell you a precious secret, Dulcie? I am a coward. I am a
slave of fear. I am afraid of beauty! Isn't that a very strange thing
to say? Can you understand the subtlety of that indefinable
psychology? Fear is an emotion. Fear of the beautiful is still a
subtler emotion. Fear, itself, is beautiful beyond words. Beauty is
Fear. Fear is Beauty. Do you follow me, Dulcie?"
"No," said the girl, bewildered.
Esme sighed:
"Some day you will follow me. It is my destiny to be followed,
pursued, haunted by loveliness impotently seeking to express itself to
me, while I, fearing it, dare only to express my fear with brush and
pencil!... _When_ shall I paint you?" he added with sad benevolence.
"What?"
"When shall I try to interpret upon canvas my subtle fear of you?"
And, as the girl remained mute: "When," he explained languidly, "shall
I appoint an hour for you to sit to me?"
"I am Mr. Barres's model," she said, flushing.
"I shall have to arrange it with him, then," he nodded, wearily.
"I don't think you can."
"Fancy! Why not?"
"Because I do not wish to sit to anybody except Mr. Barres," she said
candidly, "and what you paint does not interest me at all."
"Are you familiar with my work?" he asked incredulously.
She shook her head, shrugged, and turned to Barres, who had at last
relinquished Thessalie to Westmore.
"Well, Sweetness," he said gaily, "do you get on with Esme Trenor?"
"He talked," she said in a voice perfectly audible to Esme.
Barres glanced toward Esme, secretly convulsed, but that young apostle
of Fear had swung one thin leg over the other and was now presenting
one shoulder and the back of his head to them both, apparently in
delightful conversation with Elsena Helmund, who was fed up on him and
his fears.
"You must always talk to your neighbours at dinner," insisted Barres,
still immensely amused. "Esme is a very popular man with fashionable
women, Dulcie,--a painter in much demand and much adored.... Why do
you smile?"
Dulcie smiled again, deliciously.
"Anyway," continued Barres, "you must now give the signal for us to
rise by standing up. I'm so proud of you, Dulcie, darling!" he added
impulsively; "--and everybody is mad about you!"
"You made me--" she laughed mischievously, "--out of a rag and a bone
and a hank of hair!"
"You made yourself out of nothing, child! And everybody thinks you
delightful."
"Do _you_?"
"You dear girl!--of course I do. Does it make such a difference to
you, Dulcie--my affection for you?"
"Is it--_affection_?"
"It certainly is. Didn't you know it?"
"I didn't--know--what it was."
"Of course it is affection. Who could be with you as I have been and
not grow tremendously fond of you?"
"Nobody ever did except you. Mr. Westmore was always nice. But--but
you are so kind--I can't express--I--c-can't----" Her emotion checked
her.
"Don't try, dear!" he said hastily. "We're going in to have a jolly
dance now. You and I begin it together. Don't you let any other fellow
take you away!"
She looked up, laughed blissfully, gazing at him with brilliant eyes a
little dimmed.
"They'll all be at your heels," he said, beginning to comprehend the
beauty he had let loose on the world, "--every man-jack of them, mark
my prophecy! But ours is the first dance, Dulcie. Promise?"
"I do. And I promise you the next--please----"
"Well, I'm host," he said doubtfully, and a trifle taken aback. "We'll
have some other dances together, anyway. But I couldn't monopolise
you, Sweetness."
The girl looked at him silently, then her grey, intelligent eyes
rested directly on Thessalie Dunois.
"Will you dance with her?" she asked gravely.
"Yes, of course. And with the others, too. Tell me, Dulcie, did you
find Miss Dunois agreeable?"
"I--don't--know."
"Why, you ought to like her. She's very attractive."
"She is quite beautiful," said the girl, watching Thessalie across his
shoulder.
"Yes, she really is. What did you and she talk about?"
"Father," replied Dulcie, determined to have no further commerce with
Thessalie Dunois which involved a secrecy excluding Barres. "She asked
me if he were not my father. Then she asked me a great many stupid
questions about him. And about Miss Kurtz, who takes the desk when
father is out. Also, she asked me about the mail and whether the
postman delivered letters at the desk or in the box outside, and about
the tenants' mail boxes, and who distributed the letters through them.
She seemed interested," added the girl indifferently, "but I thought
it a silly subject for conversation."
Barres, much perplexed, sat gazing at Dulcie in silence for a moment,
then recollecting his duty, he smiled and whispered:
"Stand up, now, Dulcie. You are running this show."
The girl flushed and rose, and the others stood up. Barres took her to
the studio door, then returned to the table with the group of men.
"Well," he exclaimed happily, "what do you fellows think of Soane's
little girl now? Isn't she the sweetest thing you ever heard of?"
"A peach!" said Westmore, in his quick, hearty voice. "What's the
idea, Garry? Is it to be her career, this posing business? And where
is it going to land her? In the Winter Garden?"
"Where is it going to land _you_?" added Esme impudently.
"Why, I don't know, myself," replied Barres, with a troubled smile.
"The little thing always appealed to me--her loneliness and neglect,
and--and something about the child--I can't define it----"
"Possibilities?" suggested Mandel viciously. "Take it from me, you're
some picker, Garry."
"Perhaps. Anyway, I've given her the run of my place for the last two
years and more. And she has been growing up all the while, and I
didn't notice it. And suddenly, this spring, I discovered her for the
first time.... And--well, look at her to-night!"
"She's your private model, isn't she?" persisted Mandel.
"Entirely," replied Barres drily.
"Selfish dog!" remarked Westmore, with his lively, wholesome laugh. "I
once asked her to sit for me--more out of good nature than anything
else. And a jolly fine little model she ought to make you, Garry.
She's beginning to acquire a figure."
"She's quite wonderful that way, too," nodded Barres.
"Undraped?" inquired Esme.
"A miracle," nodded Barres absently. "Paint is becoming inadequate. I
shall model her this summer. I tell you I have never seen anything to
compare to her. Never!"
"What else will you do with her?" drawled Esme. "You'll go stale on
her some day, of course. Am I next?"
"_No_!... I don't know what she'll do. It begins to look like a
responsibility, doesn't it? She's such a fine little girl," explained
Barres warmly. "I've grown quite fond of her--interested in her. Do
you know she has an excellent mind? And nice, fastidious instincts?
She _thinks_ straight. That souse of a father of hers ought to be
jailed for the way he neglects her."
"Are you thinking of adopting her?" asked Trenor, with the faintest of
sneers, which escaped Barres.
"Adopt a _girl_? Oh, Lord, no! I can't do anything like that. Yet--I
hate to think of her future, too ... unless somebody looks out for
her. But it isn't possible for _me_ to do anything for her except to
give her a good job with a decent man----"
"Meaning yourself," commented Mandel, acidly.
"Well, I _am_ decent," retorted Barres warmly, amid general laughter.
"You fellows know what chances she might take with some men," he
added, laughing at his own warm retort.
Esme and Corot Mandel nodded piously, each perfectly aware of what
chance any attractive girl would run with his predatory neighbour.
"To shift the subject of discourse--that girl, Thessalie Dunois,"
began Westmore, in his energetic way, "is about the cleverest and
prettiest woman I've seen in New York outside the theatre district."
"I met her in France," said Barres, carelessly. "She really is
wonderfully clever."
"I shall let her talk to me," drawled Esme, flicking at his cigarette.
"It will be a liberal education for her."
Mandel's slow, oriental eyes blinked contempt; he caressed his waxed
moustache with nicotine-stained fingers:
"I am going to direct an out-of-door spectacle--a sort of play--not
named yet--up your way, Barres--at Northbrook. It's for the
Belgians.... If Miss Dunois--unless," he added sardonically, "you have
her reserved, also----"
"Nonsense! You cast Thessalie Dunois and she'll make your show for
you, Mandel!" exclaimed Barres. "I know and I'm telling you. Don't
make any mistake: there's a girl who can make good!"
"Oh. Is she a professional?"
It was on the tip of Barres's tongue to say "Rather!" But he checked
himself, not knowing Thessalie's wishes concerning details of her
incognito.
"Talk to her about it," he said, rising.
The others laid aside cigars and followed him into the studio, where
already the gramophone was going and Aristocrates and Selinda were
rolling up the rugs.
* * * * *
Barres and Dulcie danced until the music, twice revived, expired in
husky dissonance, and a new disc was substituted by Westmore.
"By heaven!" he said, "I'll dance this with my godchild or I'll murder
you, Garry. Back up, there!--you soulless monopolist!" And Dulcie,
half laughing, half vexed, was swept away in Westmore's vigorous arms,
with a last, long, appealing look at Barres.
The latter danced in turn with his feminine guests, as in duty
bound--in pleasure bound, as far as concerned Thessalie.
"And to think, to _think_," he repeated, "that you and I, who once
trod the moonlit way, June-mad, moon-mad, should be dancing here
together once more!"
"Alas," she said, "though this is June again, moon and madness are
lacking. So is the enchanted river and your canoe. And so is that gay
heart of mine--that funny, careless little heart which was once my
comrade, sending me into a happy gale of laughter every time it
counselled me to folly."
"What is the matter, Thessa?"
"Garry, there is so much the matter that I don't know how to tell
you.... And yet, I have nobody else to tell.... Is that maid of yours
German?"
"No, Finnish."
"You can't be certain," she murmured. "Your guests are all American,
are they not?"
"Yes."
"And the little Soane girl? Are her sympathies with Germany?"
"Why, certainly not! What gave you that idea, Thessa?"
The music ran down; Westmore, the indefatigable, still keeping
possession of Dulcie, went over to wind up the gramophone.
"Isn't there some place where I could be alone with you for a few
minutes?" whispered Thessalie.
"There's a balcony under the middle window. It overlooks the court."
She nodded and laid her hand on his arm, and they walked to the long
window, opened it, and stepped out.
Moonlight fell into the courtyard, silvering everything. Down there on
the grass the Prophet sat, motionless as a black sphynx in the lustre
of the moon.
Thessalie looked down into the shadowy court, then turned and glanced
up at the tiled roof just above them, where a chimney rose in
silhouette against the pale radiance of the sky.
Behind the chimney, flat on their stomachs, lay two men who had been
watching, through an upper ventilating pane of glass, the scene in
the brilliantly lighted studio below them.
The men were Soane and his crony, the one-eyed pedlar. But neither
Thessalie nor Barres could see them up there behind the chimney.
Yet the girl, as though some unquiet instinct warned her, glanced up
at the eaves above her head once more, and Barres looked up, too.
"What do you see up there?" he inquired.
"Nothing.... There could be nobody up there to listen, could there?"
He laughed:
"Who would want to climb up on the roof to spy on you or me----"
"Don't speak so loud, Garry----"
"What on earth is the trouble?"
"The same trouble that drove me out of France," she said in a low
voice. "Don't ask me what it was. All I can tell you is this: I am
followed everywhere I go. I cannot make a living. Whenever I secure an
engagement and return at the appointed time to fill it, something
happens."
"What happens?" he asked bluntly.
"They repudiate the agreement," she said in a quiet voice. "They give
no reasons; they simply tell me that they don't want me. Do you
remember that evening when I left the Palace of Mirrors?"
"Indeed, I do----"
"That was only one example. I left with an excellent contract, signed.
The next day, when I returned, the management took my contract out of
my hands and tore it up."
"What! Why, that's outrageous----"
"Hush! That is only one instance. Everywhere it is the same. I am
accepted after a try-out; then, without apparent reason, I am told
not to return."
"You mean there is some conspiracy----" he began incredulously, but
she interrupted him with a white hand over his, nervously committing
him to silence:
"Listen, Garry! Men have followed me here from Europe. I am constantly
watched in New York. I cannot shake off this surveillance for very
long at a time. Sooner or later I become conscious again of curious
eyes regarding me; of features that all at once become unpleasantly
familiar in the throng. After several encounters in street or car or
restaurant, I recognise these. Often and often instinct alone warns me
that I am followed; sometimes I am so certain of it that I take pains
to prove it."
"Do you prove it?"
"Usually."
"Well, what the devil----"
"Hush! I seem to be getting into deeper trouble than that, Garry. I
have changed my residence so many, many times!--but every time
people get into my room when I am away and ransack my effects.... And
now I never enter my room unless the landlady is with me, or the
janitor--especially after dark."
"Good Lord!----"
"Listen! I am not really frightened. It isn't fear, Garry. That word
isn't in my creed, you know. But it bewilders me."
"In the name of common sense," he demanded, "what reason has anybody
to annoy you----"
Her hand tightened on his:
"If I only knew who these people are--whether they are agents of the
Count d'Eblis or of the--the French Government! But I can't determine.
They steal letters directed to me; they steal letters which I write
and mail with my own hands. I wrote to you yesterday, because I--I
felt I couldn't stand this persecution--any--longer----"
Her voice became unsteady; she waited, gripping his hand, until
self-control returned. When she was mistress of herself again, she
forced a smile and her tense hand relaxed.
"You know," she said, "it is most annoying to have my little
love-letter to you intercepted."
But his features remained very serious:
"When did you mail that letter to me?"
"Yesterday evening."
"From where?"
"From a hotel."
He considered.
"I ought to have had it this morning, Thessa. But the mails, lately,
have been very irregular. There have been other delays. This is
probably an example."
"At latest," she said, "you should have my letter this evening."
"Y-yes. But the evening is young yet."
After a moment she drew a light sigh of relief, or perhaps of
apprehension, he was not quite sure which.
"But about this other matter--men following and annoying you," he
began.
"Not now, Garry. I can't talk about it now. Wait until we are sure
about my letter----"
"But, Thessa----"
"Please! If you don't receive it before I leave, I shall come to you
again and ask your aid and advice----"
"Will you come _here_?"
"Yes. Now take me in.... Because I am not quite certain about your
maid--and perhaps one other person----"
His expression of astonishment checked her for a moment, then the old
irresistible laughter rang out sweetly in the moonlight.
"Oh, Garry! It is funny, isn't it!--to be dogged and hunted day and
night by a pack of shadows? If I only knew who casts them!"
She took his arm gaily, with that little, courageous lifting of the
head:
"Allons! We shall dance again and defy the devil! And you may send
your servant down to see whether my letter has arrived--not that maid
with slanting eyes!--I have no confidence in her--but your marvellous
major-domo, Garry----"
Her smile was bright and untroubled as she stepped back into the
studio, leaning on his arm.
"You dear boy," she whispered, with the irresponsible undertone of
laughter ringing in her voice, "thank you for bothering with my woes.
I'll be rid of them soon, I hope, and then--perhaps--I'll lead you
another dance along the moonlit way!"
* * * * *
On the roof, close to the chimney, the one-eyed man and Soane peered
down into the studio through the smeared ventilator.
In the studio Dulcie's first party was drawing to an early but jolly
end.
She had danced a dozen times with Barres, and her heart was full of
sheerest happiness--the unreasoning bliss which asks no questions, is
endowed with neither reason nor vision--the matchless delight which
fills the candid, unquestioning heart of Youth.
Nothing had marred her party for her, not even the importunity of Esme
Trenor, which she had calmly disregarded as of no interest to her.
True, for a few moments, while Barres and Thessalie were on the
balcony outside, Dulcie had become a trifle subdued. But the wistful
glances she kept casting toward the long window were free from meaner
taint; neither jealousy nor envy had ever found lodging in the girl's
mind or heart. There was no room to let them in now.
Also, she was kept busy enough, one man after another claiming her for
a dance. And she adored it--even with Trenor, who danced extremely
well when he took the trouble. And he was taking it now with Dulcie;
taking a different tone with her, too. For if it _were_ true, as some
said, that Esme Trenor was three-quarters charlatan, he was no fool.
And Dulcie began to find him entertaining to the point of a smile or
two, as her spontaneous tribute to Esme's efforts.
That languid apostle said afterward to Mandel, where they were
lounging over the piano:
"Little devil! She's got a mind of her own, and she knows it. I've had
to make efforts, Corot!--efforts, if you please, to attract her mere
attention. I'm exhausted!--never before had to make any efforts--never
in my life!"
Mandel's heavy-lidded eyes of a big bird rested on Dulcie, where she
was seated. Her gaze was lifted to Barres, who bent over her in
jesting conversation.
Mandel, watching her, said to Esme:
"I'm always ready to _train_--that sort of girl; always on the lookout
for them. One discovers a specimen once or twice in a decade.... Two
or three in a lifetime: that's all."
"Train them?" repeated Esme, with an indolent smile. "Break them, you
mean, don't you?"
"Yes. The breaking, however, is usually mutual. However, that girl
could go far under my direction."
"Yes, she could go as far as hell."
"I mean artistically," remarked Mandel, undisturbed.
"As what, for example?"
"As anything. After all, I _have_ flaire, even if it failed me this
time. But _now_ I see. It's there, in her--what I'm always searching
for."
"What may that be, dear friend?"
"What Westmore calls 'the goods.'"
"And just what are they in her case?" inquired Esme, persistent as a
stinging gnat around a pachyderm.
"I don't know--a voice, maybe; maybe the dramatic instinct--genius as
a dancer--who knows? All that is necessary is to discover it--whatever
it may be--and then direct it."
"Too late, O philanthropic Pasha!" remarked Esme with a slight sneer.
"I'd be very glad to paint her, too, and become good friends with
her--so would many an honest man, now that she's been discovered--but
our friend Barres, yonder, isn't likely to encourage either you or me.
So"--he shrugged, but his languid gaze remained on Dulcie--"so you and
I had better kiss all hope good-bye and toddle home."
* * * * *
Westmore and Thessalie still danced together; Mrs. Helmund and Damaris
were trying new steps in new dances, much interested, indulging in
much merriment. Barres watched them casually, as he conversed with
Dulcie, who, deep in an armchair, never took her eyes from his smiling
face.
"Now, Sweetness," he was saying, "it's early yet, I know, but your
party ought to end, because you are coming to sit for me in the
morning, and you and I ought to get plenty of sleep. If we don't, I
shall have an unsteady hand, and you a pair of sleepy eyes. Come on,
ducky!" He glanced across at the clock:
"It's very early yet, I know," he repeated, "but you and I have had
rather a long day of it. And it's been a very happy one, hasn't it,
Dulcie?"
As she smiled, the youthful soul of her itself seemed to be gazing up
at him out of her enraptured eyes.
"Fine!" he said, with deepest satisfaction. "Now, you'll put your hand
on my arm and we'll go around and say good-night to everybody, and
then I'll take you down stairs."
So she rose and placed her hand lightly on his arm, and together
they made her adieux to everybody, and everybody was cordially
demonstrative in thanking her for her party.
So he took her down stairs to her apartment, off the hall, noticing
that neither Soane nor Miss Kurtz was on duty at the desk, as they
passed, and that a pile of undistributed mail lay on the desk.
"That's rotten," he said curtly. "Will you have to change your
clothes, sort this mail, and sit here until the last mail is
delivered?"
"I don't mind," she said.
"But I wanted you to go to sleep. Where is Miss Kurtz?"
"It is her evening off."
"Then your father ought to be here," he said, irritated, looking
around the big, empty hallway.
But Dulcie only smiled and held out her slim hand:
"I couldn't sleep, anyway. I had really much rather sit here for a
while and dream it all over again. Good-night.... Thank you--I can't
say what I feel--but m-my heart is very faithful to you, Mr.
Barres--will always be--while I am alive ... because you are my first
friend."
He stooped impulsively and touched her hair with his lips:
"You dear child," he said, "I _am_ your friend."
Halfway up the western staircase he called back:
"Ring me up, Dulcie, when the last mail comes!"
"I will," she nodded, almost blindly.
Out of her lovely, abashed eyes she watched him mount the stairs, her
cheeks a riot of surging colour. It was some few minutes after he was
gone that she recollected herself, turned, and, slowly traversing the
east corridor, entered her bedroom.
Standing there in darkness, vaguely silvered by reflected moonlight,
she heard through her door ajar the guests of the evening descending
the western staircase; heard their gay adieux exchanged, distinguished
Esme's impudent drawl, Westmore's lively accents, Mandel's voice, the
easy laughter of Damaris, the smooth, affected tones of Mrs. Helmund.
But Dulcie listened in vain for the voice which had haunted her ears
since she had left the studio--the lovely voice of Thessalie Dunois.
If this radiant young creature also had departed with the other
guests, she had gone away in silence.... _Had_ she departed? Or was
she still lingering upstairs in the studio for a little chat with the
most wonderful man in the world?... A very, very beautiful girl....
And the most wonderful man in the world. Why should they not linger
for a little chat together after the others had departed?
Dulcie sighed lightly, pensively, as one whose happiness lies in the
happiness of others. To be a witness seemed enough for her.
For a little while longer she remained standing there in the silvery
dusk, quite motionless, thinking of Barres.
The Prophet lay asleep, curled up on her bed; her alarm clock ticked
noisily in the darkness, as though to mimic the loud, fast rhythm of
her heart.
At last, and as in a dream, she groped for a match, lighted the gas
jet, and began to disrobe. Slowly, dreamily, she put from her slender
body the magic garments of light--_his_ gift to her.
But under these magic garments, clothing her newborn soul, remained
the radiant rainbow robe of that new dawn into which this man had led
her spirit. Did it matter, then, what dingy, outworn clothing covered
her, outside?
* * * * *
Clad once more in her shabby, familiar clothes, and bedroom slippers,
Dulcie opened the door of her dim room, and crept out into the
whitewashed hall, moving as in a trance. And at her heels stalked the
Prophet, softly, like a lithe shape that glides through dreams.
Awaiting the last mail, seated behind the desk on the worn leather
chair, she dropped her linked fingers into her lap, and gazed straight
into an invisible world peopled with enchanting phantoms. And, little
by little, they began to crowd her vision, throng all about her,
laughing, rosy wraiths floating, drifting, whirling in an endless
dance. Everywhere they were invading the big, silent hall, where the
candle's grotesque shadows wavered across whitewashed wall and
ceiling. Drowsily, now, she watched them play and sway around her. Her
head drooped; she opened her eyes.
The Prophet sat there, staring back at her out of depthless orbs of
jade, in which all the wisdom and mysteries of the centuries seemed
condensed and concentrated into a pair of living sparks.