Part 47 (1/2)

The poet shuddered as he caught that evil glance, and then, listening anew to Rita's joyous confidences, he became painfully aware of the brute that is in every man, in himself too, though as yet he had never allowed it to be clamant.

The happy girl went on talking. Suddenly Gilbert realised that she was telling him something, innocent enough in her mouth, but something that a woman should tell to a woman and not to a man.

The decent gentleman in him became wide awake, the sense of comeliness and propriety. He wasn't in the least shocked--indeed there was nothing whatever to be shocked about--but he wanted to save her, in time, from an after-realisation of a frankness that might give her moments of confusion.

He did it, as he did everything when he was really sober, really himself, with a supreme grace and delicacy. ”Cupid dear,” he said with his open and boyish smile, ”you really oughtn't to tell me that, you know. I mean--well, think!”

She looked at him with puzzled eyes for a moment and then she took his meaning. A slight flush came into her cheeks.

”Oh, I see,” she replied thoughtfully, and then, with a radiant smile and the provocative, challenging look--”Gilbert dear, you seem just like a girl to me. I quite forgot you were a man. So it doesn't matter, does it?”

Who was to attempt to preserve _les convenances_ with such a delightful child as this?

”Here is the dessert,” he said gaily, as waiters brought ices, nectarines, and pear-shaped Paris bon-bons filled with Benedictine and Chartreuse.

A single bottle of champagne had served them for the meal. Gilbert lit a cigarette and said two words to a waiter. In a minute he was brought a carafe of whiskey and a big bottle of Perrier in a silver stand. It was a dreadful thing to do, from a gastronomic or from a health point of view. Whiskey, now! He saw the look of wonder on the waiter's face, a pained wonder, as who should say, ”Well, I shouldn't have thought _this_ gentleman would have done such a thing.”

But Lothian didn't care. It was only upon the morning after a debauch, when with moles' eyes he watched every one with suspicion and with fear, that he cared twopence what people thought about anything he did.

He was roused to a high pitch of excitement by his beautiful companion.

Recklessness, an entire abandon to the Dance of the Hours was mounting up within him. But where there's a conscience, there's a Rubicon. The little brook stretched before him still, but now he meant to leap over it into the forbidden, enchanted country beyond. He ordered ”jumping powder.”

He drank deeply, dropped his cigarette into the copper bowl of rose water at his side and lit another.

”Cupid!” he said suddenly, in a voice that was quite changed, ”Rita dear, I'm going to show you something!”

She heard the change in his voice, recognised it instantly, must have known by instinct, if not by knowledge, what it meant. But there was no confusion, nor consciousness in her face. She only leant over the narrow table and blew a spiral of cigarette smoke from her parted lips.

”What, Gilbert?” she said, and he seemed to hear a caress in her voice that fired him.

”You shall hear,” he said in a low and unsteady voice. He drew a calling card from the little curved case of thin gold he carried in his waistcoat pocket, and wrote a sentence or two upon the back in French.

A waiter took the card and hurried away.

”Oh, Gilbert dear, what is the surprise?”

”Music, sweetheart. I've sent up to the band to play something.

Something special, Cupid, just for you and me alone on the first of our Arabian Nights!”

She waited for a minute, following his eyes to the gilded gallery of the musicians which bulged out into the end of the room.

There was a white card with a great black ”7” upon it, hanging to the rail. And then a sallow man with a moustache of ink came to the balcony and removed the card, subst.i.tuting another for it on which was printed in staring sable letters--”BY DESIRE.”

It was all quite new to Rita. She was awed at Gilbert's almost magical control of everything! She understood what was imminent, though.

”What's it going to be, Gilbert?” she whispered.

Her hand was stretched over the table. He took its cool virginal ivory into his for a moment. ”The 'Salut d'Amour' of Elgar,” he answered her in a low voice, ”just for you and me.”

The haunting music began.