A Woman's Will Part 26

"Did you care that I was unhappy?"

"I cared that you thought that I would lie."

"I was quite furious," he meditated; "I came from the train so late and found that you were gone out. _Je ne me fache jamais sans raison_,--but I had good reason to-night."

"You had no right to be angry over my going out, and I had just as much cause for displeasure over your returning as you had over my going."

"No," he said quickly, "for it was a compliment to you that I return, and no compliment at all to me that you stay after I am gone so as to visit the concert with monsieur."

She laughed a little.

"I hope that you will never behave so again; you were so unbearably rude that I was sorry to have sent for you. If I had not," she asked, with real curiosity, "if I had not, would you have spoken to me after a while?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"_Je ne sais pas_," he replied with brevity; and then looking down at her with one of his irresistible smiles he added, "but I find it probable."

She smiled in return, saying:

"Do undertake to never be angry like that again."

"Again!" he said quickly and pointedly; "then I _may_ come to Constance?"

Her mind was forced to take a sudden leap in order to rejoin his rapid deduction of effect from cause.

"No, no," she cried hastily, "you must not think any more of Constance, you must go to Leipsic, just as you intended doing."

"But you said--" he began.

"I meant, in the future, if we should ever chance to meet by accident."

His brow darkened.

"Where?" he asked briefly.

"Who can tell," she answered cheerfully; "people are always meeting again. See how that man of the steamer met me again to-day."

"But you have hear of him since you come?" he demanded, a fresh shade of suspicion in his tone.

"Never! Never a word until he came out of the Promenade and spoke to me this afternoon."

Von Ibn thought about it frowningly for a little and then decided it was not worth his pains.

"I would not care to meet again as he," he declared carelessly; "how he was sent to fetch me, and then he must go alone while we speak together, and then make that tale of a drive when there was no drive by the University, only a knowledge that he was much not wanted."

"Do you think he was not really invited to go to drive?" she asked, opening her eyes widely.

"Of a certainty not. But he could see he was not wanted by us. When he came near, you really looked to weep."

"Oh, _no_!" she cried, in great distress.

"Yes; it was just so."

There was a pause while she pondered this new phase of herself, and after a while he went on:

"There is something that I do not understand. Why do you desire so much to speak to me to-night and then not desire me at Constance? _ca--je ne le comprends pas!_"

"You do understand," she said; "I know you do, and you know that I know that you do."

He looked at her for a few seconds and then asked:

"How long are you in Constance?"

"I do not know."

"And then where do you go?"

"Probably to Munich."

"With always that Molly?"

"I do not know whether they will go there or not. I believe they are going to Bayreuth and then to Berlin."

He reflected for the s.p.a.ce of half a block.

"I should really go to Leipsic," he said at last.

"Then why don't you go?" she retorted, more in answer to his tone than to his speech.

"I might perhaps go to Leipsic while you are in Constance,--_perhaps_."

Heavy emphasis on the last "perhaps."

"Oh, do!" she pleaded.

"Are you going to Bayreuth?"

"No, I don't think so; they all come down to Munich right afterwards, you know."

"But it is not the same in Munich. If you had been in Bayreuth you would know that. It is not the same at all. And 'Parsifal' is only there."

He paused, but she made no answer.

"I am going to Bayreuth," he said, "and then I shall come to Munich."

He made the last statement with an echo of absolute determination, but she continued to keep silence.

"In Munich I shall see you once more?"