"Rosa Mundi!" Courteney started. He looked down into the innocent face upraised to his with something that was almost horror in his own. "Do you mean that dancing woman from Australia? What can a child like you know of her?"
She smiled at him, the mystery still in her eyes. "I do know her. I belong to her. Do you know her, too?"
A sudden hot flush went up over Courteney's face. He knew the woman; yes, he knew her. Was it years ago—or was it but yesterday?—that he had yielded to the importunities of his friend, young Eric Baron, and gone to see her dance? The boy had been infatuated, wild with the lure of her. Ah well, it was over now. She had been his ruin, just as she had been the ruin of others like him. Baron was dead and free for ever from the evil spell of his enchantress. But he had not thought to hear her name in this place and on the lips of a child.
It revolted him. For she had utterly failed to attract his fancy. He was fastidious, and all he had seen in her had been the sensuous charm of a sinuous grace which, to him, was no charm at all. He had almost hated her for the abject adoration that young Eric's eyes had held. Her art, wonderful though he admitted it to be, had wholly failed to enslave him. He had looked her once—and once only—in the eyes, judged her, and gone his way.
And now this merry-eyed, rosy-faced child came, fairy-footed, over the barrier of his reserve, and spoke with a careless familiarity of the only being in the world whom he had condemned as beyond the pale.
"I'm not supposed to tell anyone," she said, with sapphire eyes uplifted confidingly to his. "She isn't—really—here before the end of the week. You won't tell, will you? Only when I saw you plodding along out here by yourself, I just had to come and tell you, to cheer you up."
He stood and looked at her, not knowing what to say. It was as if some adverse fate were at work, driving him, impelling him.
The soft eyes sparkled into laughter. "I know who you are," chuckled the gay voice on a high note of merriment. "You are Randal Courteney, the writer. It's not a bit of good trying to hide, because everybody knows."
He attempted a frown, but failed in its achievement. "And who are you?" he said, looking straight into the daring, trusting eyes. She was, not beautiful, but her eyes were wonderful; they held a mystery that beckoned and eluded in the same subtle moment.
"I?" she said. "I am her companion, her familiar spirit. Sometimes she calls me her angel."