Then bang from tragedy to comedy. I began to laugh, for no earthly reason, and Geraldine caught the laugh as it flew on her beautiful lips, and we both laughed at each other like two children—at nothing. Then we talked for an hour about—nothing.
As Geraldine vanished that night to her own rooms I called her back, and she came back from the dark corridor like a beautiful ghost.
I only wanted to kiss her again, but she seemed to think that a perfectly good reason for my calling her back.
Then I went to bed and cried like a fool; then I got out of bed and hunted round the room in the dark, guess what for—a match-box, guess what to find—my cigarette box. I really think I must once have been a man.
CHAPTER XI
THE LITTLE BLACK BOOK
I found it, and having lit the candle by my bedside I got back into bed and began to smoke. The fumes of the tobacco, the utter silence of the house broken only by the occasional sighing of the wind in the trees outside, the exquisite room in which I was lying with its painted ceiling and rose petal coloured hangings, the image of Geraldine, all combined to produce in my mind a sort of delicious intoxication.
I saw now vaguely the wonderful dream that was beginning to unfold around me, the fairy tale of which I was to be the hero. I saw once more the face that had come back from the dark corridor to be kissed—ah me!
My hands rested upon a little black covered book, I had found it upon the mantelpiece, and had taken it into bed with me, thinking to put my cigarette ashes upon it. Instead of that I had shaken them off, without thinking, upon the floor.