The Moonlit Way Part 4

"The Seine, yonder."

She bent daintily over his sketch, holding up the skirts of her ball-gown.

"Your sketch isn't very far advanced, is it?" she inquired seriously.

"Not very," he smiled.

They stood there together in silence for a while, looking out over the moonlit river to the misty, tree-covered heights.

Through lighted rows of open windows in the elaborate little villa across the lawn came lively music and the distant noise of animated voices.

"Do you know," he ventured smilingly, "that your skirts and slippers are soaking wet?"

"I don't care. Isn't this June night heavenly?"

She glanced across at the lighted house. "It's so hot and noisy in there; one dances only with discomfort. A distaste for it all sent me out on the terrace. Then I walked on the lawn. Then I beheld you!...

Am I interrupting your work, monsieur? I suppose I am." She looked up at him navely.

He said something polite. An odd sense of having seen her somewhere possessed him now. From the distant house came the noisy American music of a two-step. With charming grace, still inspecting him out of her dark eyes, the girl began to move her pretty feet in rhythm with the music.

"Shall we?" she inquired mischievously.... "Unless you are too busy----"

The next moment they were dancing together there on the wet lawn, under the high l.u.s.tre of the moon, her fresh young face and fragrant figure close to his.

During their second dance she said serenely:

"They'll raise the d.i.c.kens if I stay here any longer. Do you know the Comte d'Eblis?"

"The Senator? The numismatist?"

"Yes."

"No, I don't know him. I am only a Latin Quarter student."

"Well, he is giving that party. He is giving it for me--in my honour.

That is his villa. And I"--she laughed--"am going to marry him--_perhaps_! Isn't this a delightful escapade of mine?"

"Isn't it rather an indiscreet one?" he asked smilingly.

"Frightfully. But I like it. How did you happen to pitch your easel on his lawn?"

"The river and the hills--their composition appealed to me from here.

It is the best view of the Seine."

"Are you glad you came?"

They both laughed at the mischievous question.

During their third dance she became a little apprehensive and kept looking over her shoulder toward the house.

"There's a man expected there," she whispered, "Ferez Bey. He's as soft-footed as a cat and he always prowls in my vicinity. At times it almost seems to me as though he were slyly watching me--as though he were employed to keep an eye on me."

"A Turk?"

"Eurasian.... I wonder what they think of my absence? Alexandre--the Comte d'Eblis--won't like it."

"Had you better go?"

"Yes; I ought to, but I won't.... Wait a moment!" She disengaged herself from his arms. "Hide your easel and colour-box in the shrubbery, in case anybody comes to look for me."

She helped him strap up and fasten the telescope-easel; they placed the paraphernalia behind the blossoming screen of syringa. Then, coming together, she gave herself to him again, nestling between his arms with a little laugh; and they fell into step once more with the distant dance-music. Over the gra.s.s their united shadows glided, swaying, gracefully interlocked--moon-born phantoms which dogged their light young feet....

A man came out on the stone terrace under the Chinese lanterns. When they saw him they hastily backed into the obscurity of the shrubbery.

"Nihla!" he called, and his heavy voice was vibrant with irritation and impatience.

He was a big man. He walked with a bulky, awkward gait--a few paces only, out across the terrace.

"Nihla!" he bawled hoa.r.s.ely.

Then two other men and a woman appeared on the terrace where the lanterns were strung. The woman called aloud in the darkness:

"Nihla! Nihla! Where are you, little devil?" Then she and the two men with her went indoors, laughing and skylarking, leaving the bulky man there alone.

The young fellow in the shrubbery felt the girl's hand tighten on his coat sleeve, felt her slender body quiver with stifled laughter. The desire to laugh seized him, too; and they clung there together, choking back their mirth while the big man who had first appeared waddled out across the lawn toward the shrubbery, shouting:

"Nihla! Where are you then?" He came quite close to where they stood, then turned, shouted once or twice and presently disappeared across the lawn toward a walled garden. Later, several other people came out on the terrace, calling, "Nihla, Nihla," and then went indoors, laughing boisterously.

The young fellow and the girl beside him were now quite weak and trembling with suppressed mirth.

They had not dared venture out on the lawn, although dance music had begun again.

"Is it your name they called?" he asked, his eyes very intent upon her face.

"Yes, Nihla."

"I recognise you now," he said, with a little thrill of wonder.

"I suppose so," she replied with amiable indifference. "Everybody knows me."

She did not ask his name; he did not offer to enlighten her. What difference, after all, could the name of an American student make to the idol of Europe, Nihla Quellen?