Volume X Part 4 (1/2)

UNSATISFIED YEARNING

BY R. K. MUNKITTRICK

Down in the silent hallway Scampers the dog about, And whines, and barks, and scratches, In order to get out.

Once in the glittering starlight, He straightway doth begin To set up a doleful howling In order to get in.

THE INVISIBLE PRINCE[2]

BY HENRY HARLAND

At a masked ball given by the Countess Wohenhoffen, in Vienna, during carnival week, a year ago, a man draped in the embroidered silks of a Chinese mandarin, his features entirely concealed by an enormous Chinese head in cardboard, was standing in the Wintergarten, the big, dimly-lighted conservatory, near the door of one of the gilt-and-white reception-rooms, rather a stolid-seeming witness of the multi-coloured romp within, when a voice behind him said, ”How do you do, Mr.

Field?”--a woman's voice, an English voice.

The mandarin turned round.

From a black mask, a pair of blue-gray eyes looked into his broad, bland Chinese face; and a black domino dropped him an extravagant little curtsey.

”How do you do?” he responded. ”I'm afraid I'm not Mr. Field; but I'll gladly pretend I am, if you'll stop and talk with me. I was dying for a little human conversation.”

”Oh you're afraid you're not Mr. Field, are you?” the mask replied derisively. ”Then why did you turn when I called his name?”

”You mustn't hope to disconcert me with questions like that,” said he.

”I turned because I liked your voice.”

He might quite reasonably have liked her voice, a delicate, clear, soft voice, somewhat high in register, with an accent, crisp, chiselled, concise, that suggested wit as well as distinction. She was rather tall, for a woman; one could divine her slender and graceful, under the voluminous folds of her domino.

She moved a little away from the door, deeper into the conservatory. The mandarin kept beside her. There, amongst the palms, a _fontaine lumineuse_ was playing, rhythmically changing colour. Now it was a shower of rubies; now of emeralds or amethysts, of sapphires, topazes, or opals.

”How pretty,” she said, ”and how frightfully ingenious. I am wondering whether this wouldn't be a good place to sit down. What do _you_ think?”

And she pointed with a fan to a rustic bench.

So they sat down on the rustic bench, by the _fontaine lumineuse_.

”In view of your fear that you're not Mr. Field, it's rather a coincidence that at a masked ball in Vienna you should just happen to be English, isn't it?” she asked.

”Oh, everybody's more or less English, in these days, you know,” said he.

”There's some truth in that,” she admitted, with a laugh. ”What a diverting piece of artifice this Wintergarten is, to be sure. Fancy arranging the electric lights to s.h.i.+ne through a dome of purple gla.s.s, and look like stars. They do look like stars, don't they? Slightly overdressed, showy stars, indeed; stars in the German taste; but stars, all the same. Then, by day, you know, the purple gla.s.s is removed, and you get the sun--the real sun. Do you notice the delicious fragrance of lilac? If one hadn't too exacting an imagination, one might almost persuade oneself that one was in a proper open-air garden, on a night in May--Yes, everybody is more or less English, in these days. That's precisely the sort of thing I should have expected Victor Field to say.”

”By-the-bye,” questioned the mandarin, ”if you don't mind increasing my stores of knowledge, who _is_ this fellow Field?”

”This fellow Field? Ah, who indeed?” said she. ”That's just what I wish you'd tell me.”

”I'll tell you with pleasure, after you've supplied me with the necessary data,” he promised cheerfully.