Looking from face to face Carlota saw the spell steal over each. The Marchese smiled with half-closed eyes, living over the joyous indiscretions of his youth. Mrs. Phelps had forgotten her guests as she bent over Carrollton, her fingers clasped in his with mothering tenderness. The girl who had played Grieg leaned back her head, her eyes filled with moody unrest. Dmitri bent forward, his cigarette burning itself to a neglected ash, a little smile on his lips. Almost imperceptibly his eyes watched Carlota.
A strange troubled feeling stole over her. It was as if the music had seized upon her own secret yearnings and was expressing them in all its exotic cadence. Suddenly she caught the eyes of the musician watching her as he played. The studio was dimly lighted from long, pendent temple lamps. The shifting glow from a tall candelabra on the piano showed her his face. It was young, with strong, lean lines, restless, seeking eyes, the chin and mouth lacking the sensuous weakness of the usual virtuoso. When he finished he crossed to her, pausing to answer a few who stopped him on the way. Dmitri sighed heavily and rose.
“See now, he will come and tell you he has been waiting for æons to see your face. He is all on fire. Do not extinguish the flame. He will tread the star path in this mood if you do not pitch him down to earth.”
Carlota drew back from his amused eyes, behind a tall Moorish screen of carved olive fretwork. Why did they all smile at things that were sacred and beyond all sense of touch or sound? If the Marchese would only come near, she would beg him to leave now, now while it was all clear and fresh in her mind, the haunting, hurting sweetness of the music and the long look between them. And as she found her breath, he stood beside her. For the moment they were as isolated as if he had found her alone in some glade of Fontainebleau, like Pierrot and Columbine.
“Why did you try to hide from me?” His tone was low and broken with embarrassment. “I played to you—you knew that, didn’t you? I tried to get to you before, but Dmitri had you. Who are you, you pagan girl with the wonder eyes? Tell me how you slipped in here to-night. Where I come from, we have gorgeous night moths; I love them, brown and tawny. Your eyes are that color, and your face is like a jasmine lifted to the moon. A warm, amber moon in late August, don’t you know. You’ll think I’m a crazy poet if I keep on, but it’s your own fault. You make me want to be a poet and everything else that means adoration of you. Can’t you speak to me?”
She closed her eyes as he gripped her hands in his. It was all so strange, so wrong, she knew how Maria would banish any such mad emotions, and yet she gloried in the tumult in her heart, in the swift response to every word he uttered, the reckless urge within her to turn to him. She strove to conquer it, and answer with composure.
“I think it is dangerous to speak so. Let us go to Mr. Phelps.”
“And your eyes say all the while, ‘I have found you,’” he laughed and took the seat beside her. “That’s what I told myself when you looked at me. I’ve found her. Tell me, truthfully, aren’t you glad to see me, aren’t you?”
Carlota smiled up at him teasingly.
“The man you call Dmitri told me you would say this to me. You should not let him spoil the surprise.”