HORSE RAILROAD, ST. AUGUSTINE.
The Professor liked, and Iris began:
“ ‘TAUSEND UND EINE NACHT.
“ ‘The birds within their dells
Are silent; hushed the shining insect throng—
Now human music swells,
And all the land is echoing with song;
The serenade, the glee,
The symphony—and forth, mit Macht und Pracht,
Orchestral harmony
Is thrilling out Tausend und Eine Nacht.
“ ‘O thousand nights and one!
The witching magic of thy opening bars,
In little notes begun,
Might move to swaying waltzes all the stars
In all their shining spheres;
Then, soft, a plaintive air the music sings—
We dance, but half in tears—
To dearest joy a sadness always clings.
“ ‘O thousand nights and one!
Could we but have a thousand nights of bliss!
The golden stories spun
By dark-eyed Arab girl ne’er equaled this.
Soon over? Yes, we see
The summer’s fading; but, when all is done,
There lives the thought that we
Were happy—not a thousand nights, but one!’
“Dancing at a watering-place, you know—two young people waltzing—orchestra playing Tausend und Eine Nacht. You have danced to it a hundred times I dare say.”
No, the Professor had neglected dancing in his youth, but still it might not be too late to learn if—
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Iris, waking up from her vision. “I forgot it was you, Sir; I thought you were—were somebody else.”
So the days passed. Iris strolled about the town with Mokes, talked on the piazza with Hoffman, and wore his roses in her hair (Hoffman was always seen with a fresh rose every morning); she even listened occasionally to extracts from the Great Work. But the sea-wall by moonlight was reserved for Antinous. Thus we dallied with the pleasant weather until Aunt Diana, like a Spartan matron, roused herself to action. “This will never do,” she said; “this very afternoon we will all go over to the island and see the tombs.”
Aunt Di’s temper had been sorely tried. Going out with Mokes the preceding evening to find Iris, who was ostensibly “strolling up and down the wall” in the moonlight with the Captain, she had found no trace of her niece from one end of the wall to the other—from the glacis of San Marco to the flag-staff at the Barracks. Heroically swallowing her wrath, she had returned to the hotel a perfect coruscation of stories, bon-mots, and compliments, to cover the delinquency of her niece, and amuse the deserted Mokes; and, to tell the truth, Mokes seemed very well amused. He was not an ardent lover.