“Doesn’t it appal you sometimes to think how much that little fragment of moon knows about you?” she asked. “She has seen all one’s sins and all one’s sufferings—”
“And knows the reason for both,” he said quietly.
She shivered, and her little lonely hands, lying on the ricksha coverlet like white flowers, trembled, so that he took them up and held them.
“Some day she will see you happy, too,” he said, “for she is a very tender old moon.”
And when Dolores would have laughed her little bitter laugh at the thought of happiness, no sound would come, for the bitterness was all gone, and a great peace had fallen on her heart.
At her door he spoke of a reception which was to be given the next night to a famous singer who was visiting Natal. They were both going to the reception, but he would be late, he said. He was “on” in the last act of Romeo and Juliet. Would she keep him a dance if there was any dancing afterwards? She promised.
When the next night came he was very late, but he came straight to her, and the peace within her deepened as she felt his arm about her.
She did not look up at him, for his eyes had grown so deeply, fiercely blue, that she dared not meet them there, before all the world.
While they danced, and all too soon, the music swerved suddenly from the waltz into “God Save the Queen,” and their evening was over. He was fain to take her to the cloak-room, where a woman friend waited; but in the shadow of the doorway he spoke.
“I find I want something else, besides fame. Will you give it to me, you sweet, sad woman?”