Chapter II: Part 2

"Put you where you belong--you dirty spy!" he said with grinning ferocity. "If there is to be trouble, I've prepared for it. When they try you for espionage, they'll try you as a foreigner--a dancing girl in the pay of Germany--as my mistress whom Max Freund and I discover in treachery to France, and whom I instantly denounce to the proper authorities!"

He shoved his pistol into his breast pocket and put on his marred silk hat.

"Which do you think they will believe--you or the Count d'Eblis?" he demanded, the nervous leer twitching at his heavy lips. "Which do you think they will believe--your denials and counter-accusations against me, or Max Freund's corroboration, and the evidence of the packet I shall now deliver to the authorities--the packet containing every cursed document necessary to convict you!--you filthy little----"

The girl bounded from her bed to the floor, her dark eyes blazing:

"Damn you!" she said. "Get out of my bedroom!"

Taken aback, he retreated a pace or two, and, at the furious menace of the little clenched fist, stepped another pace out into the corridor. The door crashed in his face; the bolt shot home.

* * * * *

In twenty minutes Nihla Quellen, the celebrated and adored of European capitals, crept out of the street door. She wore the dress of a Finistere peasant; her hair was grey, her step infirm.

The _commissaire_, two _agents de police_, and a Government detective, one Souchez, already on their way to identify and arrest her, never even glanced at the shabby, infirm figure which hobbled past them on the sidewalk and feebly mounted an omnibus marked Gare du Nord.

* * * * *

For a long time Paris was carefully combed for the dancer, Nihla Quellen, until more serious affairs occupied the authorities, and presently the world at large. For, in a few weeks, war burst like a clap of thunder over Europe, leaving the whole world stunned and reeling. The dossier of Nihla Quellen, the dancing girl, was tossed into secret archives, together with the dossier of one Ferez Bey, an Eurasian, now far beyond French jurisdiction, and already very industrious in the United States about God knows what, in company with one Max Freund.

As for Monsieur the Count d'Eblis, he remained a senator, an owner of many third-rate decorations, and of the _Mot d'Ordre_.

And he remained on excellent terms with everybody at the Swedish, Greek, and Bulgarian legations, and the Turkish Embassy, too. And continued in cipher communication with Max Freund and Ferez Bey in America.

Otherwise, he was still president of the Numismatic Society of Spain, and he continued to add to his wonderful collection of coins, and to keep up his voluminous numismatic correspondence.

He was growing stouter, too, which increased his spinal waddle when he walked; and he became very prosperous financially, through fortunate "operations," as he explained, with one Bolo Pasha.

He had only one regret to interfere with his sleep and his digestion; he was sorry he had not fired his pistol into the youthful face of Nihla Quellen. He should have avenged himself, taken his chances, and above everything else he should have destroyed her beauty. His timidity and caution still caused him deep and bitter chagrin.

For nearly a year he heard absolutely nothing concerning her. Then one day a letter arrived from Ferez Bey through Max Freund, both being in New York. And when, using his key to the cipher, he extracted the message it contained, he had learned, among other things, that Nihla Quellen was in New York, employed as a teacher in a school for dancing.

The gist of his reply to Ferez Bey was that Nihla Quellen had already outlived her usefulness on earth, and that Max Freund should attend to the matter at the first favourable opportunity.

III

SUNSET

On the edge of evening she came out of the Palace of Mirrors and crossed the wet asphalt, which already reflected primrose lights from a clearing western sky.

A few moments before, he had been thinking of her, never dreaming that she was in America. But he knew her instantly, there amid the rush and clatter of the street, recognised her even in the twilight of the passing storm--perhaps not alone from the half-caught glimpse of her shadowy, averted face, nor even from that young, lissome figure so celebrated in Europe. There is a sixth sense--the sense of nearness to what is familiar. When it awakes we call it premonition.

The shock of seeing her, the moment's exciting incredulity, passed before he became aware that he was already following her through swarming metropolitan throngs released from the toil of a long, wet day in early spring.

Through every twilit avenue poured the crowds; through every cross-street a rosy glory from the west was streaming; and in its magic he saw her immortally transfigured, where the pink light suffused the crossings, only to put on again her lovely mortality in the shadowy avenue.

At Times Square she turned west, straight into the dazzling fire of sunset, and he at her slender heels, not knowing why, not even asking it of himself, not thinking, not caring.

A third figure followed them both.

The bronze giants south of them stirred, swung their great hammers against the iron bell; strokes of the hour rang out above the din of Herald Square, inaudible in the traffic roar another square away, lost, drowned out long before the pleasant bell-notes penetrated to Forty-second Street, into which they both had turned.

Yet, as though occultly conscious that some hour had struck on earth, significant to her, she stopped, turned, and looked back--looked quite through him, seeing neither him nor the one-eyed man who followed them both--as though her line of vision were the East itself, where, across the grey sea's peril, a thousand miles of cannon were sounding the hour from the North Sea to the Alps.

He passed her at her very elbow--aware of her nearness, as though suddenly close to a young orchard in April. The girl, too, resumed her way, unconscious of him, of his youthful face set hard with controlled emotion.

The one-eyed man followed them both.

A few steps further and she turned into the entrance to one of those sprawling, pretentious restaurants, the sham magnificence of which becomes grimy overnight. He halted, swung around, retraced his steps and followed her. And at his heels two shapes followed them very silently--her shadow and his own--so close together now, against the stucco wall that they seemed like Destiny and Fate linked arm in arm.

The one-eyed man halted at the door for a few moments. Then he, too, went in, dogged by his sinister shadow.

The red sunset's rays penetrated to the rotunda and were quenched there in a flood of artificial light; and there their sun-born shadows vanished, and three strange new shadows, twisted and grotesque, took their places.

She continued on into the almost empty restaurant, looming dimly beyond. He followed; the one-eyed man followed both.

The place into which they stepped was circular, centred by a waterfall splashing over concrete rocks. In the ruffled pool goldfish glimmered, nearly motionless, and mandarin ducks floated, preening exotic plumage.

A wilderness of tables surrounded the pool, set for the expected patronage of the coming evening. The girl seated herself at one of these.

At the next table he found a place for himself, entirely unnoticed by her. The one-eyed man took the table behind them. A waiter presented himself to take her order; another waiter came up leisurely to attend to him. A third served the one-eyed man. There were only a few inches between the three tables. Yet the girl, deeply preoccupied, paid no attention to either man, although both kept their eyes on her.

But already, under the younger man's spellbound eyes, an odd and unforeseen thing was occurring: he gradually became aware that, almost imperceptibly, the girl and the table where she sat, and the sleepy waiter who was taking her orders, were slowly moving nearer to him on a floor which was moving, too.

He had never before been in that particular restaurant, and it took him a moment or two to realise that the floor was one of those trick floors, the central part of which slowly revolves.

Her table stood on the revolving part of the floor, his upon fixed terrain; and he now beheld her moving toward him, as the circle of tables rotated on its axis, which was the waterfall and pool in the middle of the restaurant.

A few people began to arrive--theatrical people, who are obliged to dine early. Some took seats at tables placed upon the revolving section of the floor, others preferred the outer circles, where he sat in a fixed position.

Her table was already abreast of his, with only the circular crack in the floor between them; he could easily have touched her.

As the distance began to widen between them, the girl, her gloved hands clasped in her lap, and studying the table-cloth with unseeing gaze, lifted her dark eyes--looked at him without seeing, and once more gazed through him at something invisible upon which her thoughts remained fixed--something absorbing, vital, perhaps tragic--for her face had become as colourless, now, as one of those translucent marbles, vaguely warmed by some buried vein of rose beneath the snowy surface.

Slowly she was being swept away from him--his gaze following--hers lost in concentrated abstraction.

He saw her slipping away, disappearing behind the noisy waterfall. Around him the restaurant continued to fill, slowly at first, then more rapidly after the orchestra had entered its marble gallery.

The music began with something Russian, plaintive at first, then beguiling, then noisy, savage in its brutal precision--something sinister--a trampling melody that was turning into thunder with the throb of doom all through it. And out of the vicious, Asiatic clangour, from behind the dash of too obvious waterfalls, glided the girl he had followed, now on her way toward him again, still seated at her table, still gazing at nothing out of dark, unseeing eyes.

It seemed to him an hour before her table approached his own again. Already she had been served by a waiter--was eating.

He became aware, then, that somebody had also served him. But he could not even pretend to eat, so preoccupied was he by her approach.

Scarcely seeming to move at all, the revolving floor was steadily drawing her table closer and closer to his. She was not looking at the strawberries which she was leisurely eating--did not lift her eyes as her table swept smoothly abreast of his.

Scarcely aware that he spoke aloud, he said:

"Nihla--Nihla Quellen!..."

Like a flash the girl wheeled in her chair to face him. She had lost all her colour. Her fork had dropped and a blood-red berry rolled over the table-cloth toward him.

"I'm sorry," he said, flushing. "I did not mean to startle you----"

The girl did not utter a word, nor did she move; but in her dark eyes he seemed to see her every sense concentrated upon him to identify his features, made shadowy by the lighted candles behind his head.

By degrees, smoothly, silently, her table swept nearer, nearer, bringing with it her chair, her slender person, her dark, intelligent eyes, so unsmilingly and steadily intent on him.

He began to stammer:

"--Two years ago--at--the Villa Tresse d'Or--on the Seine.... And we promised to see each other--in the morning----"

She said coolly:

"My name is Thessalie Dunois. You mistake me for another."

"No," he said, in a low voice, "I am not mistaken."

Her brown eyes seemed to plunge their clear regard into the depths of his very soul--not in recognition, but in watchful, dangerous defiance.

He began again, still stammering a trifle:

"--In the morning, we were to--to meet--at eleven--near the fountain of Marie de Medicis--unless you do not care to remember----"

At that her gaze altered swiftly, melted into the exquisite relief of recognition. Suspended breath, released, parted her blanched lips; her little guardian heart, relieved of fear, beat more freely.

"Are you Garry?"

"Yes."

"I know you now," she murmured. "You are Garret Barres, of the rue d'Eryx.... You _are_ Garry!" A smile already haunted her dark young eyes; colour was returning to lip and cheek. She drew a deep, noiseless breath.

The table where she sat continued to slip past him; the distance between them was widening. She had to turn her head a little to face him.

"You do remember me then, Nihla?"

The girl inclined her head a trifle. A smile curved her lips--lips now vivid but still a little tremulous from the shock of the encounter.

"May I join you at your table?"

She smiled, drew a deeper breath, looked down at the strawberry on the cloth, looked over her shoulder at him.

"You owe me an explanation," he insisted, leaning forward to span the increasing distance between them.

"Do I?"

"Ask yourself."

After a moment, still studying him, she nodded as though the nod answered some silent question of her own:

"Yes, I owe you one."

"Then may I join you?"

"My table is more prudent than I. It is running away from an explanation." She fixed her eyes on her tightly clasped hands, as though to concentrate thought. He could see only the back of her head, white neck and lovely dark hair.

Her table was quite a distance away when she turned, leisurely, and looked back at him.

"May I come?" he asked.

She lifted her delicate brows in demure surprise.

"I've been waiting for you," she said, amiably.

The one-eyed man had never taken his eyes off them.

IV

DUSK

She had offered him her hand; he had bent over it, seated himself, and they smilingly exchanged the formal banalities of a pleasantly renewed acquaintance.

A waiter laid a cover for him. She continued to concern herself, leisurely, with her strawberries.

"When did you leave Paris?" she enquired.

"Nearly two years ago."

"Before war was declared?"

"Yes, in June of that year."

She looked up at him very seriously; but they both smiled as she said:

"It was a momentous month for you then--the month of June, 1914?"

"Very. A charming young girl broke my heart in 1914; and so I came home, a wreck--to recuperate."

At that she laughed outright, glancing at his youthful, sunburnt face and lean, vigorous figure.

"When did _you_ come over?" he asked curiously.

"I have been here longer than you have. In fact, I left France the day I last saw you."

"The same day?"

"I started that very same day--shortly after sunrise. I crossed the Belgian frontier that night, and I sailed for New York the morning after. I landed here a week later, and I've been here ever since. That, monsieur, is my history."

"You've been here in New York for two years!" he repeated in astonishment. "Have you really left the stage then? I supposed you had just arrived to fill an engagement here."

"They gave me a try-out this afternoon."

"_You?_ A try-out!" he exclaimed, amazed.

She carelessly transfixed a berry with her fork:

"If I secure an engagement I shall be very glad to fill it ... and my stomach, also. If I don't secure one--well--charity or starvation confronts me."

He smiled at her with easy incredulity.

"I had not heard that you were here!" he repeated. "I've read nothing at all about you in the papers----"

"No ... I am here incognito.... I have taken my sister's name. After all, your American public does not know me."

"But----"

"Wait! I don't wish it to know me!"

"But if you----"

The girl's slight gesture checked him, although her smile became humorous and friendly:

"Please! We need not discuss my future. Only the past!" She laughed: "How it all comes back to me now, as you speak--that crazy evening of ours together! What children we were--two years ago!"

Smilingly she clasped her hands together on the table's edge, regarding him with that winning directness which was a celebrated part of her celebrated personality; and happened to be natural to her.

"Why did I not recognise you immediately?" she demanded of herself, frowning in self-reproof. "I _am_ stupid! Also I have, now and then, thought about you----" She shrugged her shoulders, and again her face faltered subtly:

"Much has happened to distract my memories," she added carelessly, impaling a strawberry, "--since you and I took the key to the fields and the road to the moon--like the pair of irresponsibles we were that night in June."

"Have you really had trouble?"

Her slim figure straightened as at a challenge, then became adorably supple again; and she rested her elbows on the table's edge and took her cheeks between her hands.

"Trouble?" she repeated, studying his face. "I don't know that word, trouble. I don't admit such a word to the honour of my happy vocabulary."

They both laughed a little.

She said, still looking at him, and at first speaking as though to herself:

"Of course, you are that same, delightful Garry! My youthful American accomplice!... Quite unspoiled, still, but very, very irresponsible ... like all painters--like all students. And the mischief which is in me recognised the mischief in you, I suppose.... I _did_ surprise you that night, didn't I?... And what a night! What a moon! And how we danced there on the wet lawn until my skirts and slippers and stockings were drenched with dew!... And how we laughed! Oh, that full-hearted, full-throated laughter of ours! How wonderful that we have lived to laugh like that! It is something to remember after death. Just think of it!--you and I, absolute strangers, dancing every dance there in the drenched grass to the music that came through the open windows.... And do you remember how we hid in the flowering bushes when my sister and the others came out to look for me? How they called, 'Nihla! Nihla! Little devil, where are you?' Oh, it was funny--funny! And to see _him_ come out on the lawn--do you remember? He looked so fat and stupid and anxious and bad-tempered! And you and I expiring with stifled laughter! And he, with his sash, his decorations and his academic palms! He'd have shot us both, you know...."

They were laughing unrestrainedly now at the memory of that impossible night a year ago; and the girl seemed suddenly transformed into an irresponsible gamine of eighteen. Her eyes grew brighter with mischief and laughter--laughter, the greatest magician and doctor emeritus of them all! The immortal restorer of youth and beauty.

Bluish shadows had gone from under her lower lashes; her eyes were starry as a child's.

"Oh, Garry," she gasped, laying one slim hand across his on the table-cloth, "it was one of those encounters--one of those heavenly accidents that reconcile one to living.... I think the moon had made me a perfect lunatic.... Because you don't yet know what I risked.... Garry!... It ruined me--ruined me utterly--our night together under the June moon!"

"What!" he exclaimed, incredulously.

But she only laughed her gay, undaunted little laugh:

"It was worth it! Such moments are worth anything we pay for them! I laughed; I pay. What of it?"

"But if I am partly responsible I wish to know----"

"You shall know nothing about it! As for me, I care nothing about it. I'd do it again to-night! That is living--to go forward, laugh, and accept what comes--to have heart enough, gaiety enough, brains enough to seize the few rare dispensations that the niggardly gods fling across this calvary which we call life! _Tenez_, that alone is living; the rest is making the endless stations on bleeding knees."

"Yet, if I thought--" he began, perplexed and troubled, "--if I thought that through my folly----"

"Folly! _Non pas!_ Wisdom! Oh, my blessed accomplice! And do you remember the canoe? Were we indeed quite mad to embark for Paris on the moonlit Seine, you and I?--I in evening gown, soaked with dew to the knees!--you with your sketching block and easel! _Quelle demenagement en famille!_ Oh, Garry, my friend of gayer days, was that really folly! No, no, no, it was infinite wisdom; and its memory is helping me to live through this very moment!"

She leaned there on her elbows and laughed across the cloth at him. The mockery began to dance again and glimmer in her eyes:

"After all I've told you," she added, "you are no wiser, are you? You don't know why I never went to the Fountain of Marie de Medicis--whether I forgot to go--whether I remembered but decided that I had had quite enough of you. You don't know, do you?"

He shook his head, smiling. The girl's face grew gradually serious:

"And you never heard anything more about me?" she demanded.

"No. Your name simply disappeared from the billboards, kiosques, and newspapers."

"And you heard no malicious gossip? None about my sister, either?"

"None."

She nodded:

"Europe is a senile creature which forgets overnight. _Tant mieux_.... You know, I shall sing and dance under my sister's name here. I told you that, didn't I?"

"Oh! That would be a great mistake----"

"Listen! Nihla Quellen disappeared--married some fat bourgeois, died, perhaps,"--she shrugged,--"anything you wish, my friend. Who cares to listen to what is said about a dancing girl in all this din of war? Who is interested?"

It was scarcely a question, yet her eyes seemed to make it so.

"Who cares?" she repeated impatiently. "Who remembers?"

"I have remembered you," he said, meeting her intently questioning gaze.

"You? Oh, you are not like those others over there. Your country is not at war. You still have leisure to remember. But they forget. They haven't time to remember anything--anybody--over there. Don't you think so?" She turned in her chair unconsciously, and gazed eastward. "--They have forgotten me over there--" And her lips tightened, contracted, bitten into silence.

The strange beauty of the girl left him dumb. He was recalling, now, all that he had ever heard concerning her. The gossip of Europe had informed him that, though Nihla Quellen was passionately and devotedly French in soul and heart, her mother had been one of those unmoral and lovely Georgians, and her father an Alsatian, named Dunois--a French officer who entered the Russian service ultimately, and became a hunting cheetah for the Grand Duke Cyril, until himself hunted into another world by that old bag of bones on the pale and shaky nag. His daughter took the name of Nihla Quellen and what money was left, and made her debut in Constantinople.

As the young fellow sat there watching her, all the petty gossip of Europe came back to him--anecdotes, panegyrics, eulogies, scandals, stage chatter, Quarter "divers," paid reclames--all that he had ever read and heard about this notorious young girl, now seated there across the table, with her pretty head framed by slender, unjewelled fingers. He remembered the gems she had worn that June night, a year ago, and their magnificence.

"Well," she said, "life is a pleasantry, a jest, a bon-mot flung over his shoulder by some god too drunk with nectar to invent a better joke. Life is an Olympian epigram made between immortal yawns. What do you think of _my_ epigram, Garry?"

"I think you are just as clever and amusing as I remember you, Nihla."

"Amusing to _you_, perhaps. But I don't entertain myself very successfully. I don't think poverty is a very funny joke. Do you?"

"Poverty!" he repeated, smiling his unbelief.

She smiled too, displayed her pretty, ringless hands humorously, for his inspection, then framed her oval face between them again and made a deliberate grimace.

"All gone," she said. "I am, as you say, here on my uppers."

"I can't understand, Nihla----"

"Don't try to. It doesn't concern you. Also, please forget me as Nihla Quellen. I told you that I've taken my sister's name, Thessalie Dunois."

"But all Europe knows you as Nihla Quellen----"

"Listen!" she interrupted sharply. "I have troubles enough. Don't add to them, or I shall be sorry I met you again. I tell you my name is Thessa. Please remember it."

"Very well," he said, reddening under the rebuke.

She noted the painful colour in his face, then looked elsewhere, indifferently. Her features remained expressionless for a while. After a few moments she looked around at him again, and her smile began to glimmer:

"It's only this," she said; "the girl you met once in your life--the dancing singing-girl they knew over there--is already an episode to be forgotten. End her career any way you wish, Garry,--natural death, suicide--or she can repent and take the veil, if you like--or perish at sea--only end her.... Please?" she added, with the sweet, trailing inflection characteristic of her.

He nodded. The girl smiled mischievously.

"Don't nod your head so owlishly and pretend to understand. You don't understand. Only two or three people do. And I hope they'll believe me dead, even if you are not polite enough to agree with them."

"How can you expect to maintain your incognito?" he insisted. "There will be plenty of people in your very first audience----"

"I had a sister, did I not?"

"_Was_ she your sister?--the one who danced with you--the one called Thessa?"

"No. But the play-bills said she was. Now, I've told you something that nobody knows except two or three unpleasant devils--" She dropped her arms on the table and leaned a trifle forward:

"Oh, pouf!" she said. "Don't let's be mysterious and dramatic, you and I. I'll tell you: I gave that woman the last of my jewels and she promised to disappear and leave her name to me to use. It was my own name, anyway, Thessalie Dunois. Now, you know. Be as discreet and nice as I once found you. Will you?"

"Of course."

"'Of course,'" she repeated, smiling, and with a little twitch of her shoulders, as though letting fall a burdensome cloak. "Allons! With a free heart, then! I am Thessalie Dunois; I am here; I am poor--don't be frightened! I shall not borrow----"

"That's rotten, Thessa!" he said, turning very red.

"Oh, go lightly, please, my friend Garry. I have no claim on you. Besides, I know men----"

"You don't appear to!"

"Tiens! Our first quarrel!" she exclaimed, laughingly. "This is indeed serious----"

"If you need aid----"

"No, I don't! Please, why do you scowl at me? Do you then wish I needed aid? Yours? Allez, Monsieur Garry, if I did I'd venture, perhaps, to say so to you. Does that make amends?" she added sweetly.

She clasped her white hands on the cloth and looked at him with that engaging, humorous little air which had so easily captivated her audiences in Europe--that, and her voice with the hint of recklessness ever echoing through its sweetness and youthful gaiety.

"What are you doing in New York?" she asked. "Painting?"

"I have a studio, but----"

"But no clients? Is that it? Pouf! Everybody begins that way. I sang in a cafe at Dijon for five francs and my soup! At Rennes I nearly starved. Oh, yes, Garry, in spite of a number of obliging gentlemen who, like you, offered--first aid----"

"That is absolutely rotten of you, Thessa. Did I ever----"

"No! For goodness' sake let me jest with you without flying into tempers!"

"But----"

"Oh, pouf! I shall not quarrel with you! Whatever you and I were going to say during the next ten minutes shall remain unsaid!... Now, the ten minutes are over; now, we're reconciled and you are in good humour again. And now, tell me about yourself, your painting--in other words, tell me the things about yourself that would interest a friend."

"Are you?"

"Your friend? Yes, I am--if you wish."

"I do wish it."

"Then I am your friend. I once had a wonderful evening with you.... I'm having a very good time now. You were _nice_ to me, Garry. I really was sorry not to see you again."

"At the fountain of Marie de Medicis," he said reproachfully.

"Yes. Flatter yourself, monsieur, because I did _not_ forget our rendezvous. I might have forgotten it easily enough--there was sufficient excuse, God knows--a girl awakened by the crash of ruin--springing out of bed to face the end of the world without a moment's warning--yes, the end of all things--death, too! Tenez, it was permissible to forget our rendezvous under such circumstances, was it not? But--I did _not_ forget. I thought about it in a dumb, calm way all the while--even while _he_ stood there denouncing me, threatening me, noisy, furious--with the button of the Legion in his lapel--and an ugly pistol which he waved in the air--" She laughed:

"Oh, it was not at all gay, I assure you.... And even when I took to my heels after he had gone--for it was a matter of life or death, and I hadn't a minute to lose--oh, very dramatic, of course, for I ran away in disguise and I had a frightful time of it leaving France! Well, even then, at top speed and scared to death, I remembered the fountain of Marie de Medicis, and you. Don't be too deeply flattered. I remembered these items principally because they had caused my downfall."

"I? I caused----"

"No. _I_ caused it! It was I who went out on the lawn. It was I who came across to see who was painting by moonlight. That began it--seeing you there--in moonlight bright enough to read by--bright enough to paint by. Oh, Garry--and you were _so_ good-looking! It was the moon--and the way you smiled at me. And they all were dancing inside, and _he_ was so big and fat and complacent, dancing away in there!... And so I fell a prey to folly."

"Was it really our escapade that--that ruined you?"

"Well--it was partly that. Pouf! It is over. And I am here. So are you. It's been nice to see you.... Please call our waiter." She glanced at her cheap, leather wrist watch.

As they rose and left the dining-room, he asked her if they were not to see each other again. A one-eyed man, close behind them, listened for her reply.

She continued to walk on slowly beside him without answering, until they reached the rotunda.

"Do you wish to see me again?" she enquired abruptly.

"Don't you also wish it?"

"I don't know, Garry.... I've been annoyed in New York--bothered--seriously.... I can't explain, but somehow--I don't seem to wish to begin a friendship with anybody...."

"Ours began two years ago."

"Did it?"

"Did it not, Thessa?"

"Perhaps.... I don't know. After all--it doesn't matter. I think--I think we had better say good-bye--until some happy hazard--like to-day's encounter--" She hesitated, looked up at him, laughed:

"Where is your studio?" she asked mischievously.

The one-eyed man at their heels was listening.

V

IN DRAGON COURT

There was a young moon in the southwest--a slender tracery in the April twilight--curved high over his right shoulder as he walked northward and homeward through the flare of Broadway.

His thoughts were still occupied with the pleasant excitement of his encounter with Thessalie Dunois; his mind and heart still responded to the delightful stimulation. Out of an already half-forgotten realm of romance, where, often now, he found it increasingly difficult to realise that he had lived for five happy years, a young girl had suddenly emerged as bodily witness, to corroborate, revive, and refresh his fading faith in the reality of what once had been.

Five years in France!--France with its clear sun and lovely moon; its silver-grey cities, its lilac haze, its sweet, deep greenness, its atmosphere of living light!--France, the dwelling-place of God in all His myriad aspects--in all His protean forms! France, the sanctuary of Truth and all her ancient and her future liberties; France, blossoming domain of Love in Love's million exquisite transfigurations, wherein only the eye of faith can recognise the winged god amid his camouflage!

* * * * *

Wine-strong winds of the Western World, and a pitiless Western sun which etches every contour with terrible precision, leaving nothing to imagination--no delicate mystery to rest and shelter souls--had swept away and partly erased from his mind the actuality of those five past years.

Already that past, of which he had been a part, was becoming disturbingly unreal to him. Phantoms haunted its ever-paling sunlight; its scenes were fading; its voices grew vague and distant; its hushed laughter dwindled to a whisper, dying like a sigh.

Then, suddenly, against that misty tapestry of tinted spectres, appeared Thessalie Dunois in the flesh!--straight out of the phantom-haunted void had stepped this glowing thing of life! Into the raw reek and familiar dissonance of Broadway she had vanished. Small wonder that he had followed her to keep in touch with the vanishing past, as a sleeper, waking against his will, strives still to grasp the fragile fabric of a happy dream.

Yet, in spite of Thessalie, in spite of dreams, in spite of his own home-coming, and the touch of familiar pavements under his own feet, the past, to Barres, was utterly dead, the present strange and unreal, the future obscure and all aflame behind a world afire with war.

For two years, now, no human mind in America had been able to adjust itself to the new heaven and the new earth which had sprung into lurid being at the thunderclap of war.

All things familiar had changed in the twinkling of an eye; all former things had passed away, leaving the stunned brain of humanity dulled under the shock.

Slowly, by degrees, the world was beginning to realise that the civilisation of Christ was being menaced once again by a resurgence from that ancient land of legend where the wild Hun denned;--that again the endless hordes of barbarians were rushing in on Europe out of their Eastern fastnesses--hordes which filled the shrinking skies with their clamour, vaunting the might of Baal, cheering their antichrist, drenching the knees of their own red gods with the blood of little children.

It seemed impossible for Americans to understand that these things could be--were really true--that the horrors the papers printed were actualities happening to civilised people like themselves and their neighbours.

Out of their own mouths the German tribes thundered their own disgrace and condemnation, yet America sat dazed, incredulous, motionless. Emperor and general, professor and junker, shouted at the top of their lungs the new creed, horrible as the Black Mass, reversing every precept taught by Christ.

Millions of Teuton mouths cheered fiercely for the new religion--Frightfulness; worshipped with frantic yells the new trinity--Wotan, Kaiser and Brute Strength.

Stunned, blinded, deafened, the Western World, still half-paralysed, stirred stiffly from its inertia. Slowly, mechanically, its arteries resumed their functions; the reflex, operating automatically, started trade again in its old channels; old habits were timidly resumed; minds groped backward, searching for severed threads which connected yesterday with to-day--groped, hunted, found nothing, and, perplexed, turned slowly toward the smoke-choked future for some reason for it all--some outlook.

There was no explanation, no outlook--nothing save dust and flame and the din of Teutonic hordes trampling to death the Son of Man.

So America moved about her worn, deep-trodden and familiar ways, her mind slowly clearing from the cataclysmic concussion, her power of vision gradually returning, adjusting itself, little by little, to this new heaven and new earth and this hell entirely new.

The _Lusitania_ went down; the Great Republic merely quivered. Other ships followed; only a low murmur of pain came from the Western Colossus.

But now, after the second year, through the thickening nightmare the Great Republic groaned aloud; and a new note of menace sounded in her drugged and dreary voice.

And the thick ears of the Hun twitched and he paused, squatting belly-deep in blood, to listen.

* * * * *

Barres walked homeward. Somewhere along in the 40's he turned eastward into one of those cross-streets originally built up of brownstone dwelling houses, and now in process of transformation into that architectural and commercial miscellany which marks the transition stage of the metropolis anywhere from Westchester to the sea.

Altered for business purposes, basements displayed signs and merchandise of bootmakers, dealers in oriental porcelains, rare prints, silverware; parlour windows modified into bay windows, sheeted with plate-glass, exposed, perhaps, feminine headgear, or an expensive model gown or two, or the sign of a real-estate man, or of an upholsterer.

Above the parlour floors lived people of one sort or another; furnished and unfurnished rooms and suites prevailed; and the brownstone monotony was already indented along the building line by brand-new constructions of Indiana limestone, behind the glittering plate-glass of which were to be seen reticent displays of artistic furniture, modern and antique oil paintings, here and there the lace-curtained den of some superior ladies' hair-dresser, where beautifying also was accomplished at a price, alas!

Halfway between Sixth Avenue and Fifth, on the north side of the street, an enterprising architect had purchased half a dozen squatty, three-storied houses, set back from the sidewalk behind grass-plots. These had been lavishly stuccoed and transformed into abodes for those irregulars in the army of life known as "artists."

In the rear the back fences had been levelled; six corresponding houses on the next street had been purchased; a sort of inner court established, with a common grass-plot planted with trees and embellished by a number of concrete works of art, battered statues, sundials, and well-curbs.

Always the army of civilisation trudges along screened, flanked, and tagged after by life's irregulars, who cannot or will not conform to routine. And these are always roaming around seeking their own cantonments, where, for a while, they seem content to dwell at the end of one more aimless etape through the world--not in regulation barracks, but in regions too unconventional, too inconvenient to attract others.

Of this sort was the collection of squatty houses, forming a "community," where, in the neighbourhood of other irregulars, Garret Barres dwelt; and into the lighted entrance of which he now turned, still exhilarated by his meeting with Thessalie Dunois.

The architectural agglomeration was known as Dragon Court--a faience Fu-dog above the electric light over the green entrance door furnishing that priceless idea--a Fu-dog now veiled by mesh-wire to provide against the indiscretions of sparrows lured thither by housekeeping possibilities lurking among the dense screens of Japanese ivy covering the facade.

Larry Soane, the irresponsible superintendent, always turned gardener with April's advent in Dragon Court, contributions from its denizens enabling him to pepper a few flower-beds with hyacinths and tulips, and later with geraniums. These former bulbs had now gratefully appeared in promising thickets, and Barres saw the dark form of the handsome, reckless-looking Irishman fussing over them in the lantern-lit dusk, while his little daughter, Dulcie, kneeling on the dim grass, caressed the first blue hyacinth blossom with thin, childish fingers.

Barres glanced into his letter-box behind the desk, above which a drop-light threw more shadows than illumination. Little Dulcie Soane was supposed to sit under it and emit information, deliver and receive letters, pay charges on packages, and generally supervise things when she was not attending school.

There were no letters for the young man. He examined a package, found it contained his collars from the laundry, tucked them under his left arm, and walked to the door looking out upon the dusky interior court.

"Soane," he said, "your garden begins to look very fine." He nodded pleasantly to Dulcie, and the child responded to his friendly greeting with the tired but dauntless smile of the young who are missing those golden years to which all childhood has a claim.

Dulcie's three cats came strolling out of the dusk across the lamplit grass--a coal black one with sea-green eyes, known as "The Prophet," and his platonic mate, white as snow, and with magnificent azure-blue eyes which, in white cats, usually betokens total deafness. She was known as "The Houri" to the irregulars of Dragon Court. The third cat, unanimously but misleadingly christened "Strindberg" by the dwellers in Dragon Court, has already crooked her tortoise-shell tail and was tearing around in eccentric circles or darting halfway up trees in a manner characteristic, and, possibly accounting for the name, if not for the sex.

"Thim cats of the kid's," observed Soane, "do be scratchin' up the plants all night long--bad cess to thim! Barrin' thim three omadhauns yonder, I'd show ye a purty bed o' poisies, Misther Barres. But Sthrin'berg, God help her, is f'r diggin' through to China."

Dulcie impulsively caressed the Prophet, who turned his solemn, incandescent eyes on Barres. The Houri also looked at him, then, intoxicated by the soft spring evening, rolled lithely upon the new grass and lay there twitching her snowy tail and challenging the stars out of eyes that matched their brilliance.

Dulcie got up and walked slowly across the grass to where Barres stood:

"May I come to see you this evening?" she asked, diffidently, and with a swift, sidelong glance toward her father.

"Ah, then, don't be worritin' him!" grumbled Soane. "Hasn't Misther Barres enough to do, what with all thim idees he has slitherin' in his head, an' all the books an' learnin' an' picters he has to think of--whithout the likes of you at his heels every blessed minute, day an' night!----"

"But he always lets me--" she remonstrated.

"G'wan, now, and lave the poor gentleman be! Quit your futtherin' an' muttherin'. G'wan in the house, ye little scut, an' see what there is f'r ye to do!----"

"What's the matter with you, Soane?" interrupted Barres good-humouredly. "Of course she can come up if she wants to. Do you feel like paying me a visit, Dulcie, before you go to bed?"

"Yes," she nodded diffidently.

"Well, come ahead then, Sweetness! And whenever you want to come you say so. Your father knows well enough I like to have you."

He smiled at Dulcie; the child's shy preference for his society always had amused him. Besides, she was always docile and obedient; and she was very sensitive, too, never outwearing her welcome in his studio, and always leaving without a murmur when, looking up from book or drawing he would exclaim cheerfully: "Now, Sweetness! Time's up! Bed for yours, little lady!"

It had been a very gradual acquaintance between them--more than two years in developing. From his first pleasant nod to her when he first came to live in Dragon Court, it had progressed for a few months, conservatively on her part, and on his with a detached but kindly interest born of easy sympathy for youth and loneliness.

But he had no idea of the passionate response he was stirring in the motherless, neglected child--of what hunger he was carelessly stimulating, what latent qualities and dormant characteristics he was arousing.

Her appearance, one evening, in her night-dress at his studio doorway, accompanied by her three cats, began to enlighten him in regard to her mental starvation. Tremulous, almost at the point of tears, she had asked for a book and permission to remain for a few moments in the studio. He had rung for Selinda, ordered fruit, cake, and a glass of milk, and had installed Dulcie upon the sofa with a lapful of books. That was the beginning.

But Barres still did not entirely understand what particular magnet drew the child to his studio. The place was full of beautiful things, books, rugs, pictures, fine old furniture, cabinets glimmering with porcelains, ivories, jades, Chinese crystals. These all, in minutest detail, seemed to fascinate the girl. Yet, after giving her permission to enter whenever she desired, often while reading or absorbed in other affairs, he became conscious of being watched; and, glancing up, would frequently surprise her sitting there very silently, with an open book on her knees, and her strange grey eyes intently fixed on him.

Then he would always smile and say something friendly; and usually forget her the next moment in his absorption of whatever work he had under way.

Only one other man inhabiting Dragon Court ever took the trouble to notice or speak to the child--James Westmore, the sculptor. And he was very friendly in his vigorous, jolly, rather boisterous way, catching her up and tossing her about as gaily and irresponsibly as though she were a rag doll; and always telling her he was her adopted godfather and would have to chastise her if she ever deserved it. Also, he was always urging her to hurry and grow up, because he had a wedding present for her. And though Dulcie's smile was friendly, and Westmore's nonsense pleased the shy child, she merely submitted, never made any advance.

* * * * *

Barres's menage was accomplished by two specimens of mankind, totally opposite in sex and colour; Selinda, a blonde, slant-eyed, and very trim Finn, doing duty as maid; and Aristocrates W. Johnson, lately employed in the capacity of waiter on a dining-car by the New York Central Railroad--tall, dignified, graceful, and Ethiopian--who cooked as daintily as a debutante trifling with culinary duty, and served at table with the languid condescension of a dilettante and wealthy amateur of domestic arts.

* * * * *

Barres ascended the two low, easy flights of stairs and unlocked his door. Aristocrates, setting the table in the dining-room, approached gracefully and relieved his master of hat, coat, and stick.

Half an hour later, a bath and fresh linen keyed up his already lively spirits; he whistled while he tied his tie, took a critical look at himself, and, dropping both hands into the pockets of his dinner jacket, walked out into the big studio, which also was his living-room.

There was a piano there; he sat down and rattled off a rollicking air from the most recent spring production, beginning to realise that he was keyed up for something livelier than a solitary dinner at home.

His hands fell from the keys and he swung around on the piano stool and looked into the dining-room rather doubtfully.

"Aristocrates!" he called.

The tall pullman butler sauntered gracefully in.

Barres gave him a telephone number to call. Aristocrates returned presently with the information that the lady was not at home.

"All right. Try Amsterdam 6703. Ask for Miss Souval."

But Miss Souval, also, was out.

Barres possessed a red-leather covered note-book; he went to his desk and got it; and under his direction Aristocrates called up several numbers, reporting adversely in every case.

It was a fine evening; ladies were abroad or preparing to fulfil engagements wisely made on such a day as this had been. And the more numbers he called up the lonelier the young man began to feel.

Thessalie had not given him either her address or telephone number. It would have been charming to have her dine with him. He was now thoroughly inclined for company. He glanced at the empty dining-room with aversion.

"All right; never mind," he said, dismissing Aristocrates, who receded as lithely as though leading a cake-walk.

"The devil," muttered the young fellow. "I'm not going to dine here alone. I've had too happy a day of it."

He got up restlessly and began to pace the studio. He knew he could get some man, but he didn't want one. However, it began to look like that or a solitary dinner.

So after a few more moments' scowling cogitation he went out and down the stairs, with the vague idea of inviting some brother painter--any one of the regular irregulars who inhabited Dragon Court.

Dulcie sat behind the little desk near the door, head bowed, her thin hands clasped over the closed ledger, and in her pallid face the expressionless dullness of a child forgotten.

"Hello, Sweetness!" he said cheerfully.

She looked up; a slight colour tinted her cheeks, and she smiled.

"What's the matter, Dulcie?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? That's a very dreary malady--nothing. You look lonely. Are you?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know whether you are lonely or not?" he demanded.

"I suppose I am," she ventured, with a shy smile.

"Where is your father?"

"He went out."

"Any letters for me--or messages?"

"A man--he had one eye--came. He asked who you are."

"What?"

"I think he was German. He had only one eye. He asked your name."

"What did you say?"

"I told him. Then he went away."

Barres shrugged:

"Somebody who wants to sell artists' materials," he concluded. Then he looked at the girl: "So you're lonely, are you? Where are your three cats? Aren't they company for you?"

"Yes...."

"Well, then," he said gaily, "why not give a party for them? That ought to amuse you, Dulcie."

The child still smiled; Barres walked on past her a pace or two, halted, turned irresolutely, arrived at some swift decision, and came back, suddenly understanding that he need seek no further--that he had discovered his guest of the evening at his very elbow.

"Did you and your father have your supper, Dulcie?"

"My father went out to eat at Grogan's."

"How about you?"

"I can find something."

"Why not dine with me?" he suggested.

The child stared, bewildered, then went a little pale.

"Shall we have a dinner party for two--you and I, Dulcie? What do you say?"

She said nothing, but her big grey eyes were fixed on him in a passion of inquiry.

"A real party," he repeated. "Let the people get their own mail and packages until your father returns. Nobody's going to sneak in, anyway. Or, if that won't do, I'll call up Grogan's and tell your father to come back because you are going to dine in my studio with me. Do you know the telephone number? Very well; get Grogan's for me. I'll speak to your father."

Dulcie's hand trembled on the receiver as she called up Grogan's; Barres bent over the transmitter:

"Soane, Dulcie is going to take dinner in my studio with me. You'll have to come back on duty, when you've eaten." He hung up, looked at Dulcie and laughed.

"I wanted company as much as you did," he confessed. "Now, go and put on your prettiest frock, and we'll be very grand and magnificent. And afterward we'll talk and look at books and pretty things--and maybe we'll turn on the Victrola and I'll teach you to dance--" He had already begun to ascend the stairs:

"In half an hour, Dulcie!" he called back; "--and you may bring the Prophet if you like.... Shall I ask Mr. Westmore to join us?"

"I'd rather be all alone with you," she said shyly.

He laughed and ran on up the stairs.

* * * * *

In half an hour the electric bell rang very timidly. Aristocrates, having been instructed and rehearsed, and, loftily condescending to his role in a kindly comedy to be played seriously, announced: "Miss Soane!" in his most courtly manner.

Barres threw aside the evening paper and came forward, taking both hands of the white and slightly frightened child.

"Aristocrates ought to have announced the Prophet, too," he said gaily, breaking the ice and swinging Dulcie around to face the open door again.

The Prophet entered, perfectly at ease, his eyes of living jade shining, his tail urbanely hoisted.

Dulcie ventured to smile; Barres laughed outright; Aristocrates surveyed the Prophet with toleration mingled with a certain respect. For a black cat is never without occult significance to a gentleman of colour.

With Dulcie's hand still in his, Barres led her into the living-room, where, presently, Aristocrates brought a silver tray upon which was a glass of iced orange juice for Dulcie, and a "Bronnix," as Aristocrates called it, for the master.

"To your health and good fortune in life, Dulcie," he said politely.

The child gazed mutely at him over her glass, then, blushing, ventured to taste her orange juice.

When she finished, Barres drew her frail arm through his and took her out, seating her. Ceremonies began in silence, and the master of the place was not quite sure whether the flush on Dulcie's face indicated unhappy embarrassment or pleasure.

He need not have worried: the child adored it all. The Prophet came in and gravely seated himself on a neighbouring chair, whence he could survey the table and seriously inspect each course.

"Dulcie," he said, "how grown-up you look with your bobbed hair put up, and your fluffy gown."

She lifted her enchanted eyes to him:

"It is my first communion dress.... I've had to make it longer for a graduation dress."

"Oh, that's so; you're graduating this summer!"

"Yes."

"And what then?"

"Nothing." She sighed unconsciously and sat very still with folded hands, while Aristocrates refilled her glass of water.

She no longer felt embarrassed; her gravity matched Aristocrates's; she seriously accepted whatever was offered or set before her, but Barres noticed that she ate it all, merely leaving on her plate, with inculcated and mathematical precision, a small portion as concession to good manners.

They had, toward the banquet's end, water ices, bon-bons, French pastry, and ice cream. And presently a slight and blissful sigh of repletion escaped the child's red lips. The symptoms were satisfactory but unmistakable; Dulcie was perfectly feminine; her capacity had proven it.

The Prophet's stately self-control in the fragrant vicinity of nourishment was now to be rewarded: Barres conducted Dulcie to the studio and installed her among cushions upon a huge sofa. Then, lighting a cigarette, he dropped down beside her and crossed one knee over the other.

"Dulcie," he said in his lazy, humorous way, "it's a funny old world any way you view it."