A Woman's Will Part 52

"_Eh bien!_"

"I never was in a place like this before."

"You may very likely never be in such a one again," he told her seriously; "so you must be as happy as you can while you're here."

"That reason for having a good time hadn't occurred to me," she answered, giving him back his smile.

"Then think to occur it now," he rejoined.

The waitress had by this time gotten rid of her ten mugs and came to them, beginning proceedings by spreading the menu down on the table and running her pencil through item after item.

"You had better order before everything is gone," Rosina suggested.

"I must think the same," he replied, and took up the menu.

"_Haben Sie bouillon?_" he demanded immediately.

The waitress signified that bouillon was not to be.

"How shall I do?" he asked, looking blank. "In all my life I have never eat without a bouillon before?"

Rosina and the waitress felt their mutual helplessness in this difficulty, and the proceedings in hand came to a standstill natural under the circ.u.mstances.

"Can't they make you some?" the American brain suggested.

He turned the idea over in his mind once or twice and then:

"No," he said; "it is not worth. It will be better that we eat now, and later, when I am in town, I will get a bouillon."

So, that difficulty being disposed of, he ordered a species of repast with an infinite sense of amus.e.m.e.nt over the bill of fare. The waitress then retired and they were left alone in their corner.

"The other lady is getting kissed," Rosina said. The publicity of a certain grade of continental love-making is always both interesting and amazing to the Anglo-Saxon temperament.

He looked behind him without at all disturbing what was in progress there. After a minute's quiet stare he turned back in his seat and shrugged his shoulders.

"You see how simple it is when the woman is still," he said pointedly.

"There is no fainting there; he loses no seventeen-mark umbrella from Baden-Baden."

She ignored the gist of this remark, and began to unhook the collar of her jacket. Then she decided to take it off altogether.

"You find it too warm?" he said, rising to a.s.sist her.

"I certainly do."

"It is curious for you and I to be in such a place, _n'est-ce pas_?"

"Very curious."

"But it is an experience, like eating in the woods."

"I don't think that it is at all like eating in the woods; I think that nothing could be more different."

"We are so alone."

"Oh!"

"Now you understand what I mean."

"Yes, now I understand what you mean. And it is really a little like the woods, too," she added. "Those iron acorns and leaves are the branches, and the stuffed eagles are the birds."

He looked at the oak-branches and the eagles for some time, and then he said:

"Let us talk."

"What are we doing now?"

"We are waiting for what is to be to eat."

"I thought that that in itself was always sufficient entertainment for a man."

"I like better to talk. I have not much time more to talk with you, _vous savez_."

"We will talk," she said, hastily. Her eyes wandered vaguely over the room seeking a subject for immediate discussion; all that she saw was the perpendicular cue of one of the billiard players.

"Watch!" she exclaimed. "He's going to make an awfully difficult shot."

Von Ibn looked towards the player with very little interest depicted on his countenance.

"Oh, he missed," she exclaimed disgustedly.

"But of course. How could a man like that do such a _ma.s.se_? You are so hopeful ever. You say, 'See him make so difficult a play,' when only looking upon the man's face tells that he himself is sure that he is about to fail."

"I'll give you a riddle," she went on, receiving his expostulation with a smile. "But perhaps you don't know what a riddle is?" she added questioningly.

"Yes, I do know what a riddle is; it is what you do not know and must tell."

"Yes, that is it."

"And your riddle is?"

"Why am I like a dragon?"

"Like a--" he faltered.

"Dragon."

"What is a dragon?"