“When shall I see you again?” he asked.
“I promised to have dinner with Fedya this evening. Why don’t you go and help father arrange his party and call for me after the performance tonight?”
De Medici nodded. He appeared to have grown speechless. He looked with infatuated silence at the girl. Then, with a sigh, he bowed, removing his fedora and placing it cavalierly over his heart.
“Until we meet again, beloved,” he whispered and, turning, walked away.
The girl stood where he had left her, her dark eyes following his figure until it was lost in the crowd. An expression of despair had come to her face. Sorrow and uncertainty seemed to claim her. She stepped forward as if to recall the vanishing Julien. Then, changing her mind, she turned and walked to the foyer. She entered the empty theater with tears glistening in her dark eyes.
CHAPTER III
MURDER
In which Julien De Medici collides with a tantalizing corpse—In which a dagger, a candlestick, a crucifix, and a false beard mumble incoherently.
Promptly at ten o’clock that night De Medici walked distractedly into the stage entrance of the Galt Theater. He had spent the day in a fever of expectancy. A memory had followed him like an offensive companion.
“She was crying when I went away. She stood looking after me and wept.”
He had watched Florence unseen by her during the few minutes she hesitated white-faced and weeping in front of the theater after his farewell.