Fanny's First Novel

by Frank Frankfort Moore

“You can save me from every unhappiness if you will come to me—and you are coming, I know.”

“I hope that if you ask me three months hence I shall be able to say 'yes'; but now—at this moment—I dare not. It is not so long to ask you to wait, seeing that I have let you have a glimpse of my heart, and told you that as you feel for me, so I feel for you.”

“Three months is an eternity! Why should it be in three months? Why not now?”

She shook her head.

“I cannot tell you. It is my little secret,” she said. “Ah, is it not enough that I have told you I love you? I shall never cease to love you.”

“Oh, this accursed place! These accursed people!” he murmured. “Why are we fated to meet only surrounded by these wretches? Why cannot we meet where I can have you in my arms, and kiss your lips that were made for kissing?”

There was something terrifying to her in that low whisper of his. He had put his head down to her until his lips were close to her ear. She felt the warmth of his face; it made her own burn. But she could not move her face away to the extent of an inch. Her feminine instinct of flight was succeeded by the equally feminine instinct of surrender. If it had been his intention—and it certainly seemed that it was—to kiss her in the presence of all the company, she would still have been incapable of avoiding such a caress.

He swore again in her ear, and Fanny, for all her primness, felt a regret deep down in her heart that her training would not allow of her expressing herself through the same medium.

But he did not come any nearer to her than that. He changed his phrases of abuse of their entourage to words of delight at her presence so close to him—alternately passionate and tender. His voice became a song in her ears, containing all such variations. His vocalism was equal to the demand put upon it. It was his métier to interpret such emotions, and now he did justice to his training, even if he fell short—and he was conscious of doing so—of dealing adequately with his own feelings. He called her once again his sweet saint who had heard his prayer; his cherished flower, whose fragrance was more grateful to him than all the incense burned in all the temples of the world was to the Powers above.

It was, he repeated, her violet modesty that had first made him adore her. Her humility brought before his eyes the picture painted by Guido Reni—the Madonna saying: Ecce ancilla Domini.