"I want the bird in the hand," said Archibald solemnly.
"You will cook your bird, old fellow, and eat it with all accessories: bread sauce, rich gravy, the succulent salade Romaine, but you will never hear it sing. A bird in the hand never sings."
The night was very still when Mark and Betty descended the stone steps which led to the fountain: a lovers' night, fragrant with a thousand essences. Silvery shafts of moonlight pierced the darkness of the park, and fell tenderly on the nymphs about the fountain. But Aphrodite was not yet revealed, for her pool lay in shadow guarded by sentinel yews and cypress.
Mark disappeared for a moment; the surface of the pool was troubled; then, with a soft, sibilant sound, the waters rose and enveloped the goddess.
"We are in the nick of time," whispered Mark.
As he spoke the moon topped the trees. For a moment a white flame seemed to sparkle round the brows of Aphrodite; then the features were revealed: the languorous half-opened eyes, the dimpled cheeks, the adorable mouth with its shy smile. The sculptor had suggested the admixture of fear and delight, a shrinking from the embrace of the unknown element, a virginal protest indicated by a gesture of taper fingers and slender shoulders, a protest overpowered by a subtle relaxing of the whole body, the nymph surrendering herself to Life and Love.
Mark turned to Betty. She met his eyes and then turned aside her own. The nymph with the phorminx smiled. And the amorini looked on approving. Mark had the hunger of Romeo on his thin face, the hunger of the beggar who has seen white loaves through the windows of a baker's shop. At Milan there is a hole in the wall whence, long ago, unhappy prisoners looked out upon tables spread with savoury viands: wretches condemned to starve—within sight and smell of baked meats and sparkling wines!
Mark looked again at Betty's face, now pensive, although the dimples were deepening. The elusive tints of the gown, transmuted by the moonbeams into a silvery radiance, shimmered like the watery tissues of the goddess; the opals at her throat might have been dewdrops.
"Dear Betty," he whispered.
She lifted her heavy lids. The eyes beneath were dark as the shadows cast by the cypress, and troubled as the waters of the pool. What darkened and troubled them? What intuition or premonition of sorrow and suffering? But Mark saw the underglow which reflected the flames of his heart.