CHAPTER IV
It was past four o'clock before I left the house, together with
Mills. Mr. Blunt, still in his riding costume, escorted us to the
very door. He asked us to send him the first fiacre we met on our
way to town. "It's impossible to walk in this get-up through the
streets," he remarked, with his brilliant smile.
At this point I propose to transcribe some notes I made at the time
in little black books which I have hunted up in the litter of the
past; very cheap, common little note-books that by the lapse of
years have acquired a touching dimness of aspect, the frayed, worn-
out dignity of documents.
Expression on paper has never been my forte. My life had been a
thing of outward manifestations. I never had been secret or even
systematically taciturn about my simple occupations which might
have been foolish but had never required either caution or mystery.
But in those four hours since midday a complete change had come
over me. For good or evil I left that house committed to an
enterprise that could not be talked about; which would have
appeared to many senseless and perhaps ridiculous, but was
certainly full of risks, and, apart from that, commanded discretion
on the ground of simple loyalty. It would not only close my lips
but it would to a certain extent cut me off from my usual haunts
and from the society of my friends; especially of the light-
hearted, young, harum-scarum kind. This was unavoidable. It was
because I felt myself thrown back upon my own thoughts and
forbidden to seek relief amongst other lives--it was perhaps only
for that reason at first I started an irregular, fragmentary record
of my days.
I made these notes not so much to preserve the memory (one cared
not for any to-morrow then) but to help me to keep a better hold of
the actuality. I scribbled them on shore and I scribbled them on
the sea; and in both cases they are concerned not only with the
nature of the facts but with the intensity of my sensations. It
may be, too, that I learned to love the sea for itself only at that
time. Woman and the sea revealed themselves to me together, as it
were: two mistresses of life's values. The illimitable greatness
of the one, the unfathomable seduction of the other working their
immemorial spells from generation to generation fell upon my heart
at last: a common fortune, an unforgettable memory of the sea's
formless might and of the sovereign charm in that woman's form
wherein there seemed to beat the pulse of divinity rather than
blood.
I begin here with the notes written at the end of that very day.
--Parted with Mills on the quay. We had walked side by side in
absolute silence. The fact is he is too old for me to talk to him
freely. For all his sympathy and seriousness I don't know what
note to strike and I am not at all certain what he thinks of all
this. As we shook hands at parting, I asked him how much longer he
expected to stay. And he answered me that it depended on R. She
was making arrangements for him to cross the frontier. He wanted
to see the very ground on which the Principle of Legitimacy was
actually asserting itself arms in hand. It sounded to my positive
mind the most fantastic thing in the world, this elimination of
personalities from what seemed but the merest political, dynastic
adventure. So it wasn't Dona Rita, it wasn't Blunt, it wasn't the
Pretender with his big infectious laugh, it wasn't all that lot of
politicians, archbishops, and generals, of monks, guerrilleros, and
smugglers by sea and land, of dubious agents and shady speculators
and undoubted swindlers, who were pushing their fortunes at the
risk of their precious skins. No. It was the Legitimist Principle
asserting itself! Well, I would accept the view but with one
reservation. All the others might have been merged into the idea,
but I, the latest recruit, I would not be merged in the Legitimist
Principle. Mine was an act of independent assertion. Never before
had I felt so intensely aware of my personality. But I said
nothing of that to Mills. I only told him I thought we had better
not be seen very often together in the streets. He agreed. Hearty
handshake. Looked affectionately after his broad back. It never
occurred to him to turn his head. What was I in comparison with
the Principle of Legitimacy?
Late that night I went in search of Dominic. That Mediterranean
sailor was just the man I wanted. He had a great experience of all
unlawful things that can be done on the seas and he brought to the
practice of them much wisdom and audacity. That I didn't know
where he lived was nothing since I knew where he loved. The
proprietor of a small, quiet cafe on the quay, a certain Madame
Leonore, a woman of thirty-five with an open Roman face and
intelligent black eyes, had captivated his heart years ago. In
that cafe with our heads close together over a marble table,
Dominic and I held an earnest and endless confabulation while
Madame Leonore, rustling a black silk skirt, with gold earrings,
with her raven hair elaborately dressed and something nonchalant in
her movements, would take occasion, in passing to and fro, to rest
her hand for a moment on Dominic's shoulder. Later when the little
cafe had emptied itself of its habitual customers, mostly people
connected with the work of ships and cargoes, she came quietly to
sit at our table and looking at me very hard with her black,
sparkling eyes asked Dominic familiarly what had happened to his
Signorino. It was her name for me. I was Dominic's Signorino.
She knew me by no other; and our connection has always been
somewhat of a riddle to her. She said that I was somehow changed
since she saw me last. In her rich voice she urged Dominic only to
look at my eyes. I must have had some piece of luck come to me
either in love or at cards, she bantered. But Dominic answered
half in scorn that I was not of the sort that runs after that kind
of luck. He stated generally that there were some young gentlemen
very clever in inventing new ways of getting rid of their time and
their money. However, if they needed a sensible man to help them
he had no objection himself to lend a hand. Dominic's general
scorn for the beliefs, and activities, and abilities of upper-class
people covered the Principle of Legitimacy amply; but he could not
resist the opportunity to exercise his special faculties in a field
he knew of old. He had been a desperate smuggler in his younger
days. We settled the purchase of a fast sailing craft. Agreed
that it must be a balancelle and something altogether out of the
common. He knew of one suitable but she was in Corsica. Offered
to start for Bastia by mail-boat in the morning. All the time the
handsome and mature Madame Leonore sat by, smiling faintly, amused
at her great man joining like this in a frolic of boys. She said
the last words of that evening: "You men never grow up," touching
lightly the grey hair above his temple.
A fortnight later.
. . . In the afternoon to the Prado. Beautiful day. At the moment
of ringing at the door a strong emotion of an anxious kind. Why?
Down the length of the dining-room in the rotunda part full of
afternoon light Dona R., sitting cross-legged on the divan in the
attitude of a very old idol or a very young child and surrounded by
many cushions, waves her hand from afar pleasantly surprised,
exclaiming: "What! Back already!" I give her all the details and
we talk for two hours across a large brass bowl containing a little
water placed between us, lighting cigarettes and dropping them,
innumerable, puffed at, yet untasted in the overwhelming interest
of the conversation. Found her very quick in taking the points and
very intelligent in her suggestions. All formality soon vanished
between us and before very long I discovered myself sitting cross-
legged, too, while I held forth on the qualities of different
Mediterranean sailing craft and on the romantic qualifications of
Dominic for the task. I believe I gave her the whole history of
the man, mentioning even the existence of Madame Leonore, since the
little cafe would have to be the headquarters of the marine part of
the plot.
She murmured, "Ah! Une belle Romaine," thoughtfully. She told me
that she liked to hear people of that sort spoken of in terms of
our common humanity. She observed also that she wished to see
Dominic some day; to set her eyes for once on a man who could be
absolutely depended on. She wanted to know whether he had engaged
himself in this adventure solely for my sake.
I said that no doubt it was partly that. We had been very close
associates in the West Indies from where we had returned together,
and he had a notion that I could be depended on, too. But mainly,
I suppose, it was from taste. And there was in him also a fine
carelessness as to what he did and a love of venturesome
enterprise.
"And you," she said. "Is it carelessness, too?"
"In a measure," I said. "Within limits."
"And very soon you will get tired."
"When I do I will tell you. But I may also get frightened. I
suppose you know there are risks, I mean apart from the risk of
life."
"As for instance," she said.
"For instance, being captured, tried, and sentenced to what they
call 'the galleys,' in Ceuta."
"And all this from that love for . . ."
"Not for Legitimacy," I interrupted the inquiry lightly. "But
what's the use asking such questions? It's like asking the veiled
figure of fate. It doesn't know its own mind nor its own heart.
It has no heart. But what if I were to start asking you--who have
a heart and are not veiled to my sight?" She dropped her charming
adolescent head, so firm in modelling, so gentle in expression.
Her uncovered neck was round like the shaft of a column. She wore
the same wrapper of thick blue silk. At that time she seemed to
live either in her riding habit or in that wrapper folded tightly
round her and open low to a point in front. Because of the absence
of all trimming round the neck and from the deep view of her bare
arms in the wide sleeve this garment seemed to be put directly on
her skin and gave one the impression of one's nearness to her body
which would have been troubling but for the perfect unconsciousness
of her manner. That day she carried no barbarous arrow in her
hair. It was parted on one side, brushed back severely, and tied
with a black ribbon, without any bronze mist about her forehead or
temple. This smoothness added to the many varieties of her
expression also that of child-like innocence.
Great progress in our intimacy brought about unconsciously by our
enthusiastic interest in the matter of our discourse and, in the
moments of silence, by the sympathetic current of our thoughts.
And this rapidly growing familiarity (truly, she had a terrible
gift for it) had all the varieties of earnestness: serious,
excited, ardent, and even gay. She laughed in contralto; but her
laugh was never very long; and when it had ceased, the silence of
the room with the light dying in all its many windows seemed to lie
about me warmed by its vibration.
As I was preparing to take my leave after a longish pause into
which we had fallen as into a vague dream, she came out of it with
a start and a quiet sigh. She said, "I had forgotten myself." I
took her hand and was raising it naturally, without premeditation,
when I felt suddenly the arm to which it belonged become
insensible, passive, like a stuffed limb, and the whole woman go
inanimate all over! Brusquely I dropped the hand before it reached
my lips; and it was so lifeless that it fell heavily on to the
divan.
I remained standing before her. She raised to me not her eyes but
her whole face, inquisitively--perhaps in appeal.
"No! This isn't good enough for me," I said.
The last of the light gleamed in her long enigmatic eyes as if they
were precious enamel in that shadowy head which in its immobility
suggested a creation of a distant past: immortal art, not
transient life. Her voice had a profound quietness. She excused
herself.
"It's only habit--or instinct--or what you like. I have had to
practise that in self-defence lest I should be tempted sometimes to
cut the arm off."
I remembered the way she had abandoned this very arm and hand to
the white-haired ruffian. It rendered me gloomy and idiotically
obstinate.
"Very ingenious. But this sort of thing is of no use to me," I
declared.
"Make it up," suggested her mysterious voice, while her shadowy
figure remained unmoved, indifferent amongst the cushions.
I didn't stir either. I refused in the same low tone.
"No. Not before you give it to me yourself some day."
"Yes--some day," she repeated in a breath in which there was no
irony but rather hesitation, reluctance what did I know?
I walked away from the house in a curious state of gloomy
satisfaction with myself.
And this is the last extract. A month afterwards.
--This afternoon going up to the Villa I was for the first time
accompanied in my way by some misgivings. To-morrow I sail.
First trip and therefore in the nature of a trial trip; and I can't
overcome a certain gnawing emotion, for it is a trip that MUSTN'T
fail. In that sort of enterprise there is no room for mistakes.
Of all the individuals engaged in it will every one be intelligent
enough, faithful enough, bold enough? Looking upon them as a whole
it seems impossible; but as each has got only a limited part to
play they may be found sufficient each for his particular trust.
And will they be all punctual, I wonder? An enterprise that hangs
on the punctuality of many people, no matter how well disposed and
even heroic, hangs on a thread. This I have perceived to be also
the greatest of Dominic's concerns. He, too, wonders. And when he
breathes his doubts the smile lurking under the dark curl of his
moustaches is not reassuring.
But there is also something exciting in such speculations and the
road to the Villa seemed to me shorter than ever before.
Let in by the silent, ever-active, dark lady's maid, who is always
on the spot and always on the way somewhere else, opening the door
with one hand, while she passes on, turning on one for a moment her
quick, black eyes, which just miss being lustrous, as if some one
had breathed on them lightly.
On entering the long room I perceive Mills established in an
armchair which he had dragged in front of the divan. I do the same
to another and there we sit side by side facing R., tenderly
amiable yet somehow distant among her cushions, with an immemorial
seriousness in her long, shaded eyes and her fugitive smile
hovering about but never settling on her lips. Mills, who is just
back from over the frontier, must have been asking R. whether she
had been worried again by her devoted friend with the white hair.
At least I concluded so because I found them talking of the heart-
broken Azzolati. And after having answered their greetings I sit
and listen to Rita addressing Mills earnestly.
"No, I assure you Azzolati had done nothing to me. I knew him. He
was a frequent visitor at the Pavilion, though I, personally, never
talked with him very much in Henry Allegre's lifetime. Other men
were more interesting, and he himself was rather reserved in his
manner to me. He was an international politician and financier--a
nobody. He, like many others, was admitted only to feed and amuse
Henry Allegre's scorn of the world, which was insatiable--I tell
you."
"Yes," said Mills. "I can imagine."
"But I know. Often when we were alone Henry Allegre used to pour
it into my ears. If ever anybody saw mankind stripped of its
clothes as the child sees the king in the German fairy tale, it's
I! Into my ears! A child's! Too young to die of fright.
Certainly not old enough to understand--or even to believe. But
then his arm was about me. I used to laugh, sometimes. Laugh! At
this destruction--at these ruins!"
"Yes," said Mills, very steady before her fire. "But you have at
your service the everlasting charm of life; you are a part of the
indestructible."
"Am I? . . . But there is no arm about me now. The laugh! Where
is my laugh? Give me back my laugh. . . ."
And she laughed a little on a low note. I don't know about Mills,
but the subdued shadowy vibration of it echoed in my breast which
felt empty for a moment and like a large space that makes one
giddy.
"The laugh is gone out of my heart, which at any rate used to feel
protected. That feeling's gone, too. And I myself will have to
die some day."
"Certainly," said Mills in an unaltered voice. "As to this body
you . . ."
"Oh, yes! Thanks. It's a very poor jest. Change from body to
body as travellers used to change horses at post houses. I've
heard of this before. . . ."
"I've no doubt you have," Mills put on a submissive air. "But are
we to hear any more about Azzolati?"
"You shall. Listen. I had heard that he was invited to shoot at
Rambouillet--a quiet party, not one of these great shoots. I hear
a lot of things. I wanted to have a certain information, also
certain hints conveyed to a diplomatic personage who was to be
there, too. A personage that would never let me get in touch with
him though I had tried many times."
"Incredible!" mocked Mills solemnly.
"The personage mistrusts his own susceptibility. Born cautious,"
explained Dona Rita crisply with the slightest possible quiver of
her lips. "Suddenly I had the inspiration to make use of Azzolati,
who had been reminding me by a constant stream of messages that he
was an old friend. I never took any notice of those pathetic
appeals before. But in this emergency I sat down and wrote a note
asking him to come and dine with me in my hotel. I suppose you
know I don't live in the Pavilion. I can't bear the Pavilion now.
When I have to go there I begin to feel after an hour or so that it
is haunted. I seem to catch sight of somebody I know behind
columns, passing through doorways, vanishing here and there. I
hear light footsteps behind closed doors. . . My own!"
Her eyes, her half-parted lips, remained fixed till Mills suggested
softly, "Yes, but Azzolati."
Her rigidity vanished like a flake of snow in the sunshine. "Oh!
Azzolati. It was a most solemn affair. It had occurred to me to
make a very elaborate toilet. It was most successful. Azzolati
looked positively scared for a moment as though he had got into the
wrong suite of rooms. He had never before seen me en toilette, you
understand. In the old days once out of my riding habit I would
never dress. I draped myself, you remember, Monsieur Mills. To go
about like that suited my indolence, my longing to feel free in my
body, as at that time when I used to herd goats. . . But never
mind. My aim was to impress Azzolati. I wanted to talk to him
seriously."
There was something whimsical in the quick beat of her eyelids and
in the subtle quiver of her lips. "And behold! the same notion had
occurred to Azzolati. Imagine that for this tete-a-tete dinner the
creature had got himself up as if for a reception at court. He
displayed a brochette of all sorts of decorations on the lapel of
his frac and had a broad ribbon of some order across his shirt
front. An orange ribbon. Bavarian, I should say. Great Roman
Catholic, Azzolati. It was always his ambition to be the banker of
all the Bourbons in the world. The last remnants of his hair were
dyed jet black and the ends of his moustache were like knitting
needles. He was disposed to be as soft as wax in my hands.
Unfortunately I had had some irritating interviews during the day.
I was keeping down sudden impulses to smash a glass, throw a plate
on the floor, do something violent to relieve my feelings. His
submissive attitude made me still more nervous. He was ready to do
anything in the world for me providing that I would promise him
that he would never find my door shut against him as long as he
lived. You understand the impudence of it, don't you? And his
tone was positively abject, too. I snapped back at him that I had
no door, that I was a nomad. He bowed ironically till his nose
nearly touched his plate but begged me to remember that to his
personal knowledge I had four houses of my own about the world.
And you know this made me feel a homeless outcast more than ever--
like a little dog lost in the street--not knowing where to go. I
was ready to cry and there the creature sat in front of me with an
imbecile smile as much as to say 'here is a poser for you. . . .'
I gnashed my teeth at him. Quietly, you know . . . I suppose you
two think that I am stupid."
She paused as if expecting an answer but we made no sound and she
continued with a remark.
"I have days like that. Often one must listen to false
protestations, empty words, strings of lies all day long, so that
in the evening one is not fit for anything, not even for truth if
it comes in one's way. That idiot treated me to a piece of brazen
sincerity which I couldn't stand. First of all he began to take me
into his confidence; he boasted of his great affairs, then started
groaning about his overstrained life which left him no time for the
amenities of existence, for beauty, or sentiment, or any sort of
ease of heart. His heart! He wanted me to sympathize with his
sorrows. Of course I ought to have listened. One must pay for
service. Only I was nervous and tired. He bored me. I told him
at last that I was surprised that a man of such immense wealth
should still keep on going like this reaching for more and more. I
suppose he must have been sipping a good deal of wine while we
talked and all at once he let out an atrocity which was too much
for me. He had been moaning and sentimentalizing but then suddenly
he showed me his fangs. 'No,' he cries, 'you can't imagine what a
satisfaction it is to feel all that penniless, beggarly lot of the
dear, honest, meritorious poor wriggling and slobbering under one's
boots.' You may tell me that he is a contemptible animal anyhow,
but you should have heard the tone! I felt my bare arms go cold
like ice. A moment before I had been hot and faint with sheer
boredom. I jumped up from the table, rang for Rose, and told her
to bring me my fur cloak. He remained in his chair leering at me
curiously. When I had the fur on my shoulders and the girl had
gone out of the room I gave him the surprise of his life. 'Take
yourself off instantly,' I said. 'Go trample on the poor if you
like but never dare speak to me again.' At this he leaned his head
on his arm and sat so long at the table shading his eyes with his
hand that I had to ask, calmly--you know--whether he wanted me to
have him turned out into the corridor. He fetched an enormous
sigh. 'I have only tried to be honest with you, Rita.' But by the
time he got to the door he had regained some of his impudence.
'You know how to trample on a poor fellows too,' he said. 'But I
don't mind being made to wriggle under your pretty shoes, Rita. I
forgive you. I thought you were free from all vulgar
sentimentalism and that you had a more independent mind. I was
mistaken in you, that's all.' With that he pretends to dash a tear
from his eye-crocodile!--and goes out, leaving me in my fur by the
blazing fire, my teeth going like castanets. . . Did you ever hear
of anything so stupid as this affair?" she concluded in a tone of
extreme candour and a profound unreadable stare that went far
beyond us both. And the stillness of her lips was so perfect
directly she ceased speaking that I wondered whether all this had
come through them or only had formed itself in my mind.
Presently she continued as if speaking for herself only.
"It's like taking the lids off boxes and seeing ugly toads staring
at you. In every one. Every one. That's what it is having to do
with men more than mere--Good-morning--Good evening. And if you
try to avoid meddling with their lids, some of them will take them
off themselves. And they don't even know, they don't even suspect
what they are showing you. Certain confidences--they don't see it-
-are the bitterest kind of insult. I suppose Azzolati imagines
himself a noble beast of prey. Just as some others imagine
themselves to be most delicate, noble, and refined gentlemen. And
as likely as not they would trade on a woman's troubles--and in the
end make nothing of that either. Idiots!"
The utter absence of all anger in this spoken meditation gave it a
character of touching simplicity. And as if it had been truly only
a meditation we conducted ourselves as though we had not heard it.
Mills began to speak of his experiences during his visit to the
army of the Legitimist King. And I discovered in his speeches that
this man of books could be graphic and picturesque. His admiration
for the devotion and bravery of the army was combined with the
greatest distaste for what he had seen of the way its great
qualities were misused. In the conduct of this great enterprise he
had seen a deplorable levity of outlook, a fatal lack of decision,
an absence of any reasoned plan.
He shook his head.
"I feel that you of all people, Dona Rita, ought to be told the
truth. I don't know exactly what you have at stake."
She was rosy like some impassive statue in a desert in the flush of
the dawn.
"Not my heart," she said quietly. "You must believe that."
"I do. Perhaps it would have been better if you. . . "
"No, Monsieur le Philosophe. It would not have been better. Don't
make that serious face at me," she went on with tenderness in a
playful note, as if tenderness had been her inheritance of all time
and playfulness the very fibre of her being. "I suppose you think
that a woman who has acted as I did and has not staked her heart on
it is . . . How do you know to what the heart responds as it beats
from day to day?"
"I wouldn't judge you. What am I before the knowledge you were
born to? You are as old as the world."
She accepted this with a smile. I who was innocently watching them
was amazed to discover how much a fleeting thing like that could
hold of seduction without the help of any other feature and with
that unchanging glance.
"With me it is pun d'onor. To my first independent friend."
"You were soon parted," ventured Mills, while I sat still under a
sense of oppression.
"Don't think for a moment that I have been scared off," she said.
"It is they who were frightened. I suppose you heard a lot of
Headquarters gossip?"
"Oh, yes," Mills said meaningly. "The fair and the dark are
succeeding each other like leaves blown in the wind dancing in and
out. I suppose you have noticed that leaves blown in the wind have
a look of happiness."
"Yes," she said, "that sort of leaf is dead. Then why shouldn't it
look happy? And so I suppose there is no uneasiness, no occasion
for fears amongst the 'responsibles.'"
"Upon the whole not. Now and then a leaf seems as if it would
stick. There is for instance Madame . . ."
"Oh, I don't want to know, I understand it all, I am as old as the
world."
"Yes," said Mills thoughtfully, "you are not a leaf, you might have
been a tornado yourself."
"Upon my word," she said, "there was a time that they thought I
could carry him off, away from them all--beyond them all. Verily,
I am not very proud of their fears. There was nothing reckless
there worthy of a great passion. There was nothing sad there
worthy of a great tenderness."
"And is THIS the word of the Venetian riddle?" asked Mills, fixing
her with his keen eyes.
"If it pleases you to think so, Senor," she said indifferently.
The movement of her eyes, their veiled gleam became mischievous
when she asked, "And Don Juan Blunt, have you seen him over there?"
"I fancy he avoided me. Moreover, he is always with his regiment
at the outposts. He is a most valorous captain. I heard some
people describe him as foolhardy."
"Oh, he needn't seek death," she said in an indefinable tone. "I
mean as a refuge. There will be nothing in his life great enough
for that."
"You are angry. You miss him, I believe, Dona Rita."
"Angry? No! Weary. But of course it's very inconvenient. I
can't very well ride out alone. A solitary amazon swallowing the
dust and the salt spray of the Corniche promenade would attract too
much attention. And then I don't mind you two knowing that I am
afraid of going out alone."
"Afraid?" we both exclaimed together.
"You men are extraordinary. Why do you want me to be courageous?
Why shouldn't I be afraid? Is it because there is no one in the
world to care what would happen to me?"
There was a deep-down vibration in her tone for the first time. We
had not a word to say. And she added after a long silence:
"There is a very good reason. There is a danger."
With wonderful insight Mills affirmed at once:
"Something ugly."
She nodded slightly several times. Then Mills said with
conviction:
"Ah! Then it can't be anything in yourself. And if so . . . "
I was moved to extravagant advice.
"You should come out with me to sea then. There may be some danger
there but there's nothing ugly to fear."
She gave me a startled glance quite unusual with her, more than
wonderful to me; and suddenly as though she had seen me for the
first time she exclaimed in a tone of compunction:
"Oh! And there is this one, too! Why! Oh, why should he run his
head into danger for those things that will all crumble into dust
before long?"
I said: "YOU won't crumble into dust." And Mills chimed in:
"That young enthusiast will always have his sea."
We were all standing up now. She kept her eyes on me, and repeated
with a sort of whimsical enviousness:
"The sea! The violet sea--and he is longing to rejoin it! . . . At
night! Under the stars! . . . A lovers' meeting," she went on,
thrilling me from head to foot with those two words, accompanied by
a wistful smile pointed by a suspicion of mockery. She turned
away.
"And you, Monsieur Mills?" she asked.
"I am going back to my books," he declared with a very serious
face. "My adventure is over."
"Each one to his love," she bantered us gently. "Didn't I love
books, too, at one time! They seemed to contain all wisdom and
hold a magic power, too. Tell me, Monsieur Mills, have you found
amongst them in some black-letter volume the power of foretelling a
poor mortal's destiny, the power to look into the future?
Anybody's future . . ." Mills shook his head. . . "What, not even
mine?" she coaxed as if she really believed in a magic power to be
found in books.
Mills shook his head again. "No, I have not the power," he said.
"I am no more a great magician, than you are a poor mortal. You
have your ancient spells. You are as old as the world. Of us two
it's you that are more fit to foretell the future of the poor
mortals on whom you happen to cast your eyes."
At these words she cast her eyes down and in the moment of deep
silence I watched the slight rising and falling of her breast.
Then Mills pronounced distinctly: "Good-bye, old Enchantress."
They shook hands cordially. "Good-bye, poor Magician," she said.
Mills made as if to speak but seemed to think better of it. Dona
Rita returned my distant how with a slight, charmingly ceremonious
inclination of her body.
"Bon voyage and a happy return," she said formally.
I was following Mills through the door when I heard her voice
behind us raised in recall:
"Oh, a moment . . . I forgot . . ."
I turned round. The call was for me, and I walked slowly back
wondering what she could have forgotten. She waited in the middle
of the room with lowered head, with a mute gleam in her deep blue
eyes. When I was near enough she extended to me without a word her
bare white arm and suddenly pressed the back of her hand against my
lips. I was too startled to seize it with rapture. It detached
itself from my lips and fell slowly by her side. We had made it up
and there was nothing to say. She turned away to the window and I
hurried out of the room.
