Part 54 (1/2)

”But you was different,” she a.s.serted. ”I know you was different.”

How could she have divined the change in Julian that one night of the Empire had wrought?

”I say,” she went on, and her voice was trembling with eagerness, ”you've got to tell me somethin'.”

”Well?”

”That night I--I--it wasn't me made you different, was it?”

And as she spoke Julian knew that it was she. Perhaps a fleeting expression in his face--telling naked truth as expressions may, though words belie them--made her understand, for her cheeks turned grey beneath the paint on them.

”I wish I'd killed myself long ago,” she said in a whisper.

”Hus.h.!.+” he exclaimed, cursing his tell-tale features. ”I'm not different; and if I was you could have nothing to do with it.”

She said no more, but he saw by her brooding expression that she clung to her intuition, and knew what he denied.

The hands of the clock fixed on the wall above their heads pointed to the half-hour after midnight. The pale and weary waiters were racing to and fro clearing the tables, dodging this way and that with trays, stealing along with arms full of long-stemmed, thick tumblers, eager for rest. The electric moons gave a sudden portentous wink.

”Time!” a voice cried.

People began to get up and move out, exchanging loud good-nights. The long room slowly a.s.sumed an aspect of desertion and greedy desolation.

”We must go,” Julian said.

Cuckoo woke out of that reverie, which seemed so chilly, so terrible even. She glanced at Julian, and her eyes were again full of tears. He was standing, and he bent down to her with his two hands resting upon the marble of the table. He bent down and then suddenly stooped lower, lower, almost glaring into her eyes. She went back in her seat a little, half frightened.

”What's it?” she murmured.

But Julian only remained fixedly looking into her eyes. In the pool of the tears of them he saw two tiny shadowy flames, flickering, as he thought, but quite clear, distinct, unmistakable. And there came a thick beating in his side. His heart beat hard. Each time he had seen the vision of the flame he had been instantly impressed with a sense of strange mystery, as if at the vision of some holy thing, a flame upon a prayer-blessed altar, a flame ascending from a tear-washed sacrifice.

And now he saw this thing that he fancied holy burning behind the tears in Cuckoo's eyes!

Cuckoo got up.

”Come on,” she said, abruptly.

Julian followed her out of the cafe.

The dream of the moon was with them as they came to the entrance, clear as a quiet soul, directly above them in a clear sky. Julian looked up at it, but Cuckoo looked, with eyes that were almost sullen, at the night panorama of the Circus. They waited a moment on the step. Julian was lighting a cigar, and many other voluble men, most of them French or Italian, were doing likewise. Having lighted it, and given a strong puff or two, Julian said to Cuckoo:

”Shall I drive you home?”

”I ain't going home yet,” she replied doggedly. ”Are you?”

He hesitated.

”Are you, or aren't you?” she reiterated.

While she spoke, in her voice that was often a little hoa.r.s.e, a young voice with a thread in it, he realized that somehow she--painted sinner as she was--had managed to make him ashamed of himself. Or was it that an awe had come to his soul with that strange flame? In any case his mood had risen from the old night mood of a young man to something higher, something that could not be satisfied in the sordid way of the world.

”I think I shall go home,” he said.