“May I ask what it shows to your glance of investigation?”
“You are growing impertinent and fatuous. Have you been studying the excellent style of our friend Agiropoulos?”
Rudolph drew himself up proudly. He, a high bred Austrian, to be compared with a vulgar Greek merchant! He drew his aristocratic brows into an angry frown, and raised an irreproachable hand to his fair moustache:
“I cannot think that anything in me could remind you of Monsieur Agiropoulos.”
Photini came over, and stood in front of him with folded arms, calmly surveying him; then she leant forward, and placed her hands on his shoulders, laughing.
“They have doubtless been telling you what a fine fellow you are, and, my dear child, they have been telling you a most infernal lie.”
Rudolph burst out laughing, and took her two hands into his, which he held in a gentle clasp.
“Mademoiselle, you are a very extraordinary woman. Some people might say you are rude. I hardly think the word applies to you. I don’t know what you are.”
“Mad,” said Photini, drawing him to her and kissing him.
Rudolph went red and white, and started back as if he had been shot. No woman, except his mother, had ever kissed him, and the experience coming to him thus, suddenly and unsought, filled him with an inexplicable anger and pain. Without a word Photini walked straight to the piano, and the silence waved into the unfathomable loveliness of Chopin’s “Barcarolle.”