Mahmoud was staring into my eyes now.
"Where was this?"
"Just behind you. Lift your head—that seam marks the sliding panel. She may come again when she sees the top of my umbrella over the wall. Listen! That's her step. She has some one with her—crouch down close. There's only room for her head. You may see her then without her attendant knowing you are here. Quick! she is sliding the panel!"
Outside of Paris, overlooking the Seine, high up on a hill, stands the Bellevue—a restaurant known to half the world. Sweeping down from the perfectly appointed tables lining the rail of the broad piazza; skimming the tree-tops, the plain below, the twisting river, rose-gold in the twilight, the dots of parks and villas, the eye is lost in the distant city and the haze beyond—the whole a-twinkle with myriads of electric lights.
There, one night, from my seat against the opposite wall (I was dining alone), I was amusing myself watching a table being set with more than usual care; some rich American, perhaps, with the world in a sling, or some young Russian running the gauntlet of the dressing-rooms. Staid old painters like myself take an interest in these things. They serve to fill his note-book, and sometimes help to keep him young.
When I looked again the waiter was drawing out a chair for a woman with her back to me. In the half-light, her figure, in silhouette against the cluster of candles lighting the table, I could see that she was young and, from the way she took her seat, wonderfully graceful. Opposite her, drawing out his own chair, stood a young man in evening dress, his head outlined against the low, twilight sky. It was Mahmoud!
I sprang from my seat and walked straight toward them. There came a low cry of joy, and then four outstretched arms—two of them tight-locked about my neck.
"Tell me," I asked, when we had seated ourselves, Yuleima's hands still clinging to mine. "After I left you that last night in the garden, was the boat where we hid it?"
"Yes."
"Who rowed you to the steamer?"