Part 34 (2/2)

”Was that what was on your mind? My dear, _I'm_ rich--I'm frightfully rich!”

”Rich?” Her tone was all incredulity.

”It happened the day you left Paris. Oh, I know I ought to have told you at the castle, but I forgot it. You see, there was so little time to talk to you and so many more important things to say.”

He told her all about it while the dusk slowly deepened. Chitta should have a salary for remaining in a cottage that he would give her in Alava and never leaving it. He would give his friends that dinner now--Houdon and Devignes, Varachon and Garnier--a dinner of celebration at which the host would be present and to which even Gaston Francois Louis Pasbeaucoup and the elephantine Madame would sit down. There would be bushels of strawberries. Seraphin would be pensioned for life, so that he might paint only the pictures that his heart demanded, and Fourget--yes, Cartaret would embrace dear old Fourget like a true Gaul. In the Luxembourg Gardens the statues of the old G.o.ds smiled and held their peace.

”You--you can study too,” said Cartaret. ”You can have the best art-masters in the world, and you shall have them.”

But Vitoria shook her head.

”There,” she said, ”is another confession and the last. I was the more ready to leave Paris when I ran away from you, because I was disheartened: the master had told me that I could never learn, and so I was afraid to face you.”

”Then _I'll_ never paint again,” vowed Cartaret. ”Pictures? I was successful only when I painted pictures of you, and why should I paint them when I have you?”

She looked at him gravely.

”I am glad,” she said, ”that you are rich, but I am also glad that we have both been poor--together. Oh,”--she looked about the familiar room,--”it needs but one thing more: if only the street-organ were playing that Scotch song that it used to play!”

”If it only were!” he agreed. ”However, we can't have everything, can we?”

But lovers, if they only want it enough, can have everything, and, somehow, the hurdy-gurdy did, just at that moment, begin to play ”Annie Laurie” as it used to do, out in the rue du Val-de-Grace.

Cartaret led her toward the darkened window, but stopped half-way across the room.

”I will try to deserve you,” he said. ”I _will_ make myself what you want me to be.”

”You _are_ that,” she answered, her face raised toward his. ”All that I ask is to have you with me always as you are now.” The clear contralto of her voice ran like a refrain to the simple air of the ballad. ”I want you with me when you are unhappy, so that I may comfort you; when you are ill, so that I may nurse you; when you are glad, so that I may be glad because you are. I want to know you in every mood: I want to belong to you.”

High over the gleaming roofs, the moon, a disk of yellow gla.s.s, swung out upon the indigo sky and peeped in at that window. One silver beam enveloped her. It bathed her lithe, firm figure; it touched her pure face, her scarlet lips; it made a refulgent glory of her hair, and, out of it, the splendor of her wonderful eyes was for him.

”Soon,” he whispered, ”in the chapel of Ste. Jeanne D'Arc at the church of St. Germain des Pres.”

”Good-night,” she said.... ”Good-night, my love.”

She raised her white hands to him and drew one step nearer. Then she yielded herself to his arms and, as they closed, strong and tight, about her, her own arms circled his neck.

The scent of the Azure Rose returned with her lips: a vision of mountain-peaks and sunlight upon crests of snow, a perfume sweeter than the scent of any rose in any garden, a poem in a language that Cartaret at last could understand.

Her lips met his....

”Oh,” he whispered, ”sweetheart, is it really, really you?”

”Yes,” said the lady of the Rose, ”it--is _me_!”

THE END.

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