Not, however, to young Bertram. As he stood questioning me with his frank blue eyes, even the white garments he had donned (because, he said, "It might be a beastly time before he wore decent togs again") told the same tale as his glad voice--the tale of that boundless hope which holds ever the greatest tragedy of life.
"Who is that pretty boy?" said a low soft voice at my elbow.
I did not answer the spoken question of the voice, but as I replied to the unspoken question of many eyes I was conscious that of all the many incongruous elements I had imported into that Eastern garden this Western woman who had appraised young Bertram's beauty was the most incongruous. It was not the Paris frock and hat, purchased on the way out--she had only rejoined her husband the day before--which made her so. It was the woman inside them. I knew the type so well, and my soul rose in revolt that she should soil his youth with her approval.
"I've no doubt there are stories," I replied; "but I don't happen to know them. I'm as much a stranger here as you all are. So come! let us look round till it's dark enough to dance."
"Dark enough to sit out, he means," said someone to the Paris frock and hat, whereat there was a laugh, but not so general and not half so hearty as the one which greeted young Bertram's gravity as he replaced the cannon ball on the plinth with the profound remark:
"Something about a woman, you bet."
"Do introduce me!" pleaded the Paris frock and hat as the lad came down, bearing the brunt of chaff gallantly; but I pretended not to hear, though I knew such diplomacy was vain with women of her type--women whose refinement makes them shameless.
Yes! she was a strange anomaly in that garden, though, Heaven knows, it appealed frankly enough to the senses. So frankly that it absorbed even such meretricious Western additions as cosy corners and iced champagne--on tables laid for two--without encroaching a hair's--breadth on the inviolable spiritual kingdom of the ivory orange blossom, the silver jasmine stars, even the red hearts of the roses.
They were lighting up the lines of the cressets about the dancing floor when we began to reassemble, and as each star of light quivered into being, the misty unreal radiance grew around the fretted marble of the summer house until arch and pilaster seemed to lose solidity, and the whole building, leaving its body behind in shining sleep, found freedom ass a palace of dreams.
And there, as a foreground to its mystical beauty, was young Bertram dangling his long legs from the pedestal and nursing the battered old bronze ball on his lap as if it had been a baby.