"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 ba.n.a.lities 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 gra.s.s 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.