XX
Gray gathered the dog into his arms and strode swiftly out into the sunshot, purple light of early evening.
"What a girl!" he muttered to himself. "What a girl! What a corking specimen of her sex!"
Presently he came in sight of her, and the puppy scrambled violently until set down. Then he bolted for Constance Leslie, and it was only when the little thing leaped frantically upon her that she turned with a soft, breathless little cry. And saw Gray coming toward her out of the rose and golden sunset.
Neither spoke as he came up and looked into her brown eyes and saw the traces of tears there still. The puppy leaped deliriously about them. And for a long while her slim hands lay limply in[191] his. He looked at the ocean; she at the darkening forest.
And after a little while he drew the note from his pocket.
"I had written this when I found yours," he said. And he held it for her while she read it, bending nearer in the dim, rosy light.
After she read it she took it from him gently, folded it, and slipped it into the bosom of her gown.
Neither said anything. One of her hands still remained in his, listlessly at first—then the fingers crisped as his other arm encircled her.
They were both gazing vaguely at the ocean now. Presently they moved slowly toward it through the fragrant dusk. Her hair, loosened a little, brushed his sunburned cheek.
And around them gambolled the wise little dog, no longer apprehensive, but unutterably content with what the God of all good little doggies had so mercifully sent to him in loco parentis.
"That," said the novelist, "is another slice of fact which would never do for fiction. Besides I once read a story somewhere or other about a dog bringing two people together."[192]
"The theme," I observed, "is thousands of years old."
"That's the trouble with all truth," nodded Duane. "It's old as Time itself, and needs a new suit of clothes every time it is exhibited to instruct people."
"What with new manners, new fashions, new dances, and the moral levelling itself gradually to the level of the unmoral," said Stafford, "nobody on the street would turn around to look at the naked truth in these days."
"Truth must be fashionably gowned to attract," I admitted.
"We of the eccentric nobility understand that," said the little Countess Athalie, glancing out of the window; and to me she added: "Lean over and see whether they have stationed a policeman in front of the Princess Zimbamzim's residence."
I went out on the balcony and glanced down the block. "Yes," I said.
"Poor old Princess," murmured the girl. "She detests moving."
"All frauds do," remarked Duane.
"She isn't a fraud," said Athalie quietly.
Our silence indicated our surprise. After a few moments the girl added:
"Whatever else she may be she is not a fraud[193] in her profession. I think I had better give you an example of her professional probity. It interested me considerably as I followed it in my crystal. She knew all the while that I was watching her as well as the very people she herself was watching; and once or twice she looked up at me out of my crystal and grinned."
"Can she see us now?" I inquired uneasily.
"No."
"Why not?" asked Duane.
"I shall not tell you why."
"Not that I care whether she sees me or not," he added.
"Do you care, Harry, whether I see you occasionally in my crystal?" smiled Athalie.
Duane flushed brightly and reminded her that she was too honourable to follow the movements of her personal friends unless requested to do so by them.
"That is quite true," rejoined the girl, simply. "But once I saw you when I did not mean to."
"Well?" he demanded, redder still.
"You were merely asleep in your own bed," she said, laughing and accepting a lighted match from me. Then as the fragrant thread of smoke twisted in ghostly ringlets across her smooth young cheeks she settled back among her cushions.[194]
