Eva sprang up suddenly. “You shan’t speak of him to me or praise him, wretched woman.” Her cheeks glowed, and the brightly mocking tone in which she often spoke to Susan became menacing.
“Golpes para besos,” Susan murmured in Spanish. “Blows for kisses.” She arose in order to comb Eva’s hair and braid it for the night.
The next day Crammon appeared. “I found you one whose laughter puts to shame the laughter of the muleteer of Cordova,” he said with mock solemnity. “Why is he rejected?”
His heart bled. Yet he wooed her for his friend. Much as he loved and admired Denis Lay, yet Christian was closer to him. Christian was his discovery, of which he was vain, and his hero.
Eva looked at him with eyes that glittered, and replied: “It is true that he knows how to laugh like that muleteer of Cordova, but he has no more culture of the heart than that same fellow. And that, my dear man, is not enough.”
“And what is to become of us?” sighed Crammon.
“You may follow us to England,” Eva said cheerfully. “I’m going to dance at His Majesty’s Theatre. Eidolon can be my page. He can learn to practise reverence, and not to chaffer for horses when beautiful poems are being read to me. Tell him that.”
Crammon sighed again. Then he took her hand, and devoutly kissed the tips of her fingers. “I shall deliver your message, sweet Ariel,” he said.
XII
Cardillac and Eva fell out, and that robbed the man of his last support. The danger with which he was so rashly playing ensnared him; the abysses lured him on.