Black is White

by George Barr McCutcheon

“How pretty, how sweet you are this morning,” he cried, his dark eyes dancing.

“Silly!” she scoffed, but with a radiant smile. Then, with a perfectly childish giggle, she slammed the door and scurried away as if in fear of pursuit.

He was artistic, temperamental. Such as he have not the capacity for haste when there is the slightest opportunity to dream and dawdle. He was a full quarter of an hour taking his tub, and another was consumed in getting into his clothes. At home he was always much longer than this, for he was delayed by the additional task of selecting shirts, ties, socks, and scarf-pins, and changing his mind and all of them three or four times before being satisfied with the effect. He sallied forth in great haste at nine thirty-five, and was extremely proud of himself, although unshaved.

His first act, after warmly greeting Mrs Desmond, was to sit down at the piano. Hurriedly he played a few jerky, broken snatches of the haunting air he had heard the night before.

“I've been wondering if I could remember it,” he apologised, as he followed them into the dining-room. “What's the matter, Lyddy? Didn't you sleep well? Poor old girl, I was a beast to deprive you of your bed.”

“I have a mean headache, that's all,” said the girl quickly. He noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the queer expression, as of trouble, in their depths. “It will go as soon as I've had my coffee.”

Night, with its wonderful sensations, was behind them. Day revealed the shadow that had fallen. They unconsciously shrank from it and drew back into the shelter of their own misgivings. The joyous abandon of the night before was dead. Over its grave stood the leering spectre of unrest.

When he took her in his arms later on, and kissed her, there was not the shadow of a doubt in the mind of either that the restraining influence of a condition over which they had no control was there to mock their endeavour to be natural. They were not to be deceived by the apparent earnestness of the embrace. Each knew that the other was asking a question, even as their lips met and clung in the rather pathetic attempt to confirm the fond dream of the night before. They kissed as through a veil. They were awake once more, and they were wary, unconvinced. The answer to their questions came in the kiss itself, and constraint fell upon them.

Drawn by an impulse that had been struggling within him, Frederic found himself standing at the sitting-room window. It was a sly, covert, though intensely eager look that he directed at another window far below. If he hoped for some sign of life in his father's study he was to be disappointed. The curtains hung straight and motionless. He would have denied the charge that he longed to see Yvonne sitting in the casement, waiting to waft a sign of greeting up to him; he would have denied that the thought was in his mind when he went to the window; and yet he was conscious of a feeling of disappointment, even annoyance.

With considerable adroitness Lydia engaged his attention at the piano. Keyed up as she was, his every emotion was plain to her perceptions. She had anticipated the motive that led him to the window. She knew that it would assert itself in spite of all that he could do to prevent. She waited humbly for the thing to happen, pain in her heart, and when her reading proved true she was prepared to combat its effect. Music was her only ally.