Their eyes met. The game had grown very perilous. "Men may remember the princess," she replied, "but forget the woman."
"If it weren"t for the woman inside the princess; what reason should I have for remembering?" he asked.
She fenced. "But, as it is, you don"t see me very often."
"I know. But you are here--to be seen--not when I want you, for that would be every hour of the day--but, at least, in times of emergency.
You are here, all the same, in the atmosphere of my life."
"And if I go abroad I shall no longer be in that atmosphere? Did I not say you would forget?"
She laughed. Then quickly started forward, and, elbow on knee and chin on palm, regarded him brightly. "We are talking like a couple of people out of Mademoiselle de Scudery," she said before he had time to reply.
"And we are in the twentieth century, mon pauvre ami. We must be sensible. I know that you will miss me. And I will miss you too. Mais que voulez-vous? We have to obey the laws of the world we live in."
"Need we?" asked Paul daringly. "Why need we?"
"We must. I must go away to my own country. You must stay in yours and work and fulfill your ambitions." She paused. "I want you to be a great man," she said, with a strange tenderness in her voice.
"With you by my side," said he, "I feel I could conquer the earth."
"As your good friend I shall always be by your side. Vous voyez, mon cher Paul," she went on quickly in French. "I am not quite as people see me. I am a woman who is lonely and not too happy, who has had disillusions which have embittered her life. You know my history. It is public property. But I am young. And my heart is healed--and it craves faith and tenderness and--and friendship. I have many to flatter me. I am not too ugly. Many men pay their court to me, but they do not touch my heart. None of them even interest me. I don"t know why. And then I have my rank, which imposes on me its obligations. Sometimes I wish I were a little woman of nothing at all, so that I could do as I like.
Mais enfin, I do what I can. You have come, Paul Savelli, with your youth and your faith and your genius, and you pay your court to me like the others. Yes, it is true--and as long as it was amusing, I let it go on. But now that you interest me, it is different. I want your success.
I want it with all my heart. It is a little something in my life--I confess it--quelque chose de tres joli--and I will not spoil it. So let us be good friends, frank and loyal--without any Scudery." She looked at him with eyes that had lost their languor--a sweet woman"s eyes, a little moist, very true. "And now," she said, "will you be so kind as to put a log on the fire."
Paul rose and threw a log on the glowing embers, and stood by her side.
He was deeply moved. Never before had she so spoken. Never before had she afforded a glimpse of the real woman. Her phrases, so natural, so sincere, in her own tongue, and so caressive, stirred the best in him.
The glamour pa.s.sed from the royal lady; only the sweet and beautiful woman remained.
"I will be what you will, my Princess," he said.
At that moment he could not say more. For the first time in his life he was mute in a woman"s presence; and the reason was that for the first time in his life love for a woman had gripped his heart.
She rose and smiled at him. "Bons amis, francs et loyaux?"
"Francs et loyaux."
She gave him her hand in friendship; but she gave him her eyes in love.
It is the foolish way of women.
"May a frank and loyal friend write to you sometimes?" he asked.
"Why, yes. And a frank and loyal friend will answer."
"And when shall I see you again?"
"Did I not tell you," she said, moving to the bell, for this was leave-taking--"that I shall be in Venice at Easter?"
Paul went out into the frosty air, and the bright wintry stars shone down on him. Often on such nights he had looked up, wondering which was his star, the star that guided his destiny. But to-night no such fancy crossed his mind. He did not think of the stars. He did not think of his destiny. His mind and soul were drenched in thought of one woman.
It had come at last, the great pa.s.sion, the infinite desire. It had come in a moment, wakened into quivering being by the caressive notes of the dear French voice--"mais je suis jeune, et mon coeur est gueri, et il lui manque affreus.e.m.e.nt de la foi, de la tendresse, de--de"--adorable catch of emotion--"de l"amitie." Friendship, indeed!
For amitie all but her lips said amour. He walked beneath the wintry stars, a man in a perfect dream.
Till then she had been but his Princess, the exquisite lady whom it had amused to wander with him into the pays du tendre. She had been as far above him as the now disregarded stars. She had come down with a carnival domino over her sidereal raiment, and had met him on carnival equality. He beau masque! He, knowing her, had fallen beneath her starry spell. He was Paul Kegworthy, Paul Savelli, what you like; Paul the adventurer, Paul the man born to great things. She was a beautiful woman, bearing the t.i.tle of Princess, the t.i.tle that had haunted his life since first the Vision Splendid dawned upon him as he lay on his stomach eavesdropping and heard the words of the divinely-smelling G.o.ddess who had given him his talisman, the cornelian heart. To "rank himself with princes" had been the intense meaning of his life since ragged and fiercely imaginative childhood. Odd circ.u.mstances had ranked him with Sophie Zobraska. The mere romance of it had carried him off his feet. She was a princess. She was charming. She frankly liked his society. She seemed interested in his adventurous career. She was romantic. He too. She was his Egeria. He had worshipped her romantically, in a mediaeval, Italian way, and she had accepted the homage. It had all been deliciously artificial. It had all been Mademoiselle de Scudery. But to-day the real woman, casting off her carnival domino, casting off too the sidereal raiment, had spoken, for the first time, in simple womanhood, and her betraying eyes had told things that they had told to no other man living or dead. And all that was artificial, all that was fantastic, all that was glamour, was stripped away from Paul in the instant of her self-revelation. He loved her as man loves woman. He laughed aloud as his young feet struck the frozen road. She knew and was not angry. She, in her wonder, gave him leave to love her. It was obvious that she loved him to love her. Dear G.o.d! He could go on loving her like this for the rest of his life. What more did he want? To the clean man of nine-and-twenty, sufficient for the day is the beauty thereof.
An inspired youth took his place at the Winwoods" dinner table that evening. The elderly, ugly heiress, Miss Durning, concerning whom Miss Winwood had, with gentle malice, twitted him some months before, sat by his side. He sang her songs of Araby and tales of far Cashmere--places which in the commonplace way of travel he had never visited. What really happened in the drawing room between the departure of the ladies and the entrance of the men no one knows. But before the ladies went to bed Miss Winwood took Paul aside.
"Paul dear," she said, "you"re never going to marry an old woman for money, are you?"
"Good G.o.d, no! Dearest lady, what do you mean?"
His cry was so sincere that she laughed.
"Nothing," she said.
"But you must mean something." He threw out his hands.
"Are you aware that you"ve been flirting disgracefully with Lizzle Durning?"
"I?" said Paul, clapping a hand to his shirt-front.
"You."
He smiled his sunny smile into the clear, direct eyes of his dearest lady--all the more dear because of the premature white of her hair. "I would flirt to-night with Xantippe, or Kerenhappuch, or Queen Victoria," said he.
"Why?"
He laughed, and although none of the standing and lingering company had overheard them, he gently led her to the curtained embrasure of the drawing-room window.
"This is perhaps the biggest day of my life. I"ve not had an opportunity of telling you. This morning Frank Ayres offered me a seat in Parliament."
"I"m glad," said Ursula Winwood; but her eyes hardened. "And so--Lizzie Durning--"
He took both her elbows in his hands--only a Fortunate Youth, with his laughing charm, would have dared to grip Ursula Winwood"s elbows and cut her short. "Dearest lady," said he, "to-day there are but two women in the world for me. You are one. The other--well--it isn"t Miss Durning."
She searched him through and through, "This afternoon?"
"Yes."
"Paul!" She withdrew from his grasp. In her voice was a touch of reproach.
"Dearest lady," said he, "I would die rather than marry a rich woman, ugly or beautiful, if I could not bring her something big in return--something worth living for."
"You"ve fold me either too much or too little. Am I not ent.i.tled to know how things stand?"
"You"re ent.i.tled to know the innermost secrets of my heart," he cried; and he told thereof as far as his love for the Princess was concerned.
"But, my poor boy," said Ursula tenderly, "how is it all going to end?"
"It"s never going to end," cried Paul.