X

The Prince of Seyre handed his hat and stick to the parlor maid and seated himself upon the divan.

"I should be very sorry," he said politely, as the maid left the room, "if my coming has hastened the departure of your visitors."

"Not in the least," Louise assured him. "They were leaving when you were announced. Sophy and I are taking Mr. Strangewey to a Bohemian restaurant and a music-hall afterward."

"Fortunate Mr. Strangewey!" the prince sighed. "But, forgive me, why not a more dignified form of entertainment for his first evening?"

"The poor man has no clothes," Louise explained. "He came to London quite unexpectedly."

"No clothes?" the prince repeated. "It is a long journey to take in such a fashion. A matter of urgent business, perhaps?"

Louise shrugged her shoulders. She had risen to her feet and was busy rearranging some roses in the bowl by her side.

"Mr. Strangewey has just come into a large fortune, as you know," she said. "Probably there are many things to be attended to."

The prince made no further comment. He drew a tortoise-shell-and-gold cigarette-case from his pocket.

"It is permitted that one smokes?" he inquired.

"It is always permitted to you," was the gracious reply.

"One of my privileges," he remarked, as he blew out the match; "in fact, almost my only privilege."

She glanced up, but her eyes fell before his.

"Is that quite fair?"

"I should be grieved to do anything or to say anything to you that was not entirely fair."

She crushed one of the roses to pieces suddenly in her hands and shook the petals from her long, nervous fingers.

"To-day," she said, "this afternoon—now—you have come to me with something in your mind, something you wish to say, something you are not sure how to say. That is, you see, what Henri Graillot calls my intuition. Even you, who keep all your feelings under a mask, can conceal very little from me."

"My present feelings," the prince declared, "I do not wish to conceal. I would like you to know them. But as words are sometimes clumsy, I would like, if it were possible, to let you see into my heart, or, in these days, shall I not say my consciousness? I should feel, then, that without fear of misunderstanding you would know certain things which I would like you to know."

She came over and seated herself by his side on the divan. She even laid her hand upon his arm.

"Eugène," she expostulated, "we are too old friends to talk always in veiled phrases. There is something you have to say to me. I am listening."

"You know what it is," he told her.

"You are displeased because I have changed my mind about that little journey of ours?"

"I am bitterly disappointed," he admitted.

She looked at him curiously and then down at her rose-stained fingers.

"That does not sound quite like you," she said. "And yet I ought to know that sometimes you do feel things, even though you show it so little. I am sorry, Eugène."

"Why are you sorry?"

"Because I feel that I cannot take that journey."

"You mean that you cannot now, or that you cannot at any time?"

"I do not know," she answered. "You ask me more than I can tell you. Sometimes life seems so stable, a thing one can make a little chart of and hang up on the wall, and put one's finger here and there—'To-day I will do this, to-morrow I will feel that'—and the next morning comes and the chart is in the fire. I wish I understood myself a little better, Eugène!"

"Self-understanding is the rarest of all gifts," the prince remarked. "It is left for those who love us to understand us."

"And you?"

"I believe that I understand you better, far better, than you understand yourself," he declared. "That is why I also believe that I am necessary to you. I can prevent your making mistakes."

"Then prevent me," she begged. "Something has happened, and the chart is in the fire to-day."

"You have only," he said, "to give your maid her orders, to give me this little hand, and I will draw out a fresh one which shall direct to the place in life which is best for you. It is not too late."

She rose from beside him and walked toward the fireplace, as if to touch the bell. He watched her with steady eyes but expressionless face. There was something curious about her walk. The spring had gone from her feet, her shoulders were a little hunched. It was the walk of a woman who goes toward the things she fears.

"Stop!" he bade her.

She turned and faced him, quickly, almost eagerly. There was a look in her face of the prisoner who finds respite.

"Leave the bell alone," he directed. "My own plans are changed. I do not wish to leave London this week."

Her face was suddenly brilliant, her eyes shone. Something electric seemed to quiver through her frame. She almost danced back to her place by his side.

"How foolish!" she murmured. "Why didn't you say so at once?"

"Because," he replied, "they have only been changed during the last few seconds. I wanted to discover something which I have discovered."

"To discover something?"

"That my time has not yet come."

She turned away from him. She was oppressed with a sense almost of fear, a feeling that he was able to read the very thoughts forming in her brain; to understand, as no one else in the world could understand, the things that lived in her heart.

"I must not keep you," he remarked, glancing at the clock. "It was very late for me to call, and you will be wanting to join your friends."

"They are coming here for me," she explained. "There is really no hurry at all. We are not changing anything. It is to be quite a simple evening. Sometimes I wish that you cared about things of that sort, Eugène."

He blew through his lips a little cloud of smoke from the cigarette which he had just lit.

"I do not fancy," he replied, "that I should be much of a success as a fourth in your little expedition."

"But it is silly of you not to visit Bohemia occasionally," she declared, ignoring the meaning that lay beneath his words. "It is refreshing to rub shoulders with people who feel, and who show freely what they feel; to eat their food, drink their wine, even join in their pleasures."

The prince shook his head.

"I am not of the people," he said, "and I have no sympathy with them. I detest the bourgeoisie of every country in the world—my own more particularly."

"If you only knew how strangely that sounds!" she murmured.

"Does it?" he answered. "You should read my family history, read of the men and women of my race who were butchered at the hands of that drunken, lustful mob whom lying historians have glorified. I am one of those who do not forget injuries. My estates are administered more severely than any others in France. No penny of my money has ever been spent in charity. I neither forget nor forgive."

She laughed a little nervously.

"What an unsympathetic person you can be, Eugène!"

"And for that very reason," he replied, "I can be sympathetic. Because I hate some people, I have the power of loving others. Because it pleases me to deal severely with my enemies, it gives me joy to deal generously with my friends. That is my conception of life. May I wish you a pleasant evening?"

"You are going now?" she asked, a little surprised.

He smiled faintly as he raised her fingers to his lips. She had made a little movement toward him, but he took no advantage of it.

"I am going now."

"When shall I see you again?" she inquired, as she came back from ringing the bell.

"A telephone-message from your maid, a line written with your own fingers," he said, "will bring me to you within a few minutes. If I hear nothing, I may come uninvited, but it will be when the fancy takes me. Once more, Louise, a pleasant evening!"

He passed out of the door, which the parlor maid was holding open for him. Crossing to the window, Louise watched him leave the house and enter his waiting automobile. He gave no sign of haste or disappointment. He lit another cigarette deliberately upon the pavement and gave his orders to the chauffeur with some care.

As the car drove off without his having once glanced up at the window, she shivered a little. There was a silence which, it seemed to her, could be more minatory even than accusation.