Again Morena’s smile deepened into his cheeks. He gave way, in the Jewish fashion so deceptively suggestive of meekness and timidity, when it is, at its worst, merely pliable insolence, at its best, pliable determination. “You must pardon me, Miss Jane,” he said in his murmuring, cultivated voice. “You see I’ve had a great misfortune. I’ve never been in your West. I’ve lived in New York where good manners haven’t time or space to flourish. I hadn’t the least intention of being impertinent. Do you want me to go?”
He moved as if to leave her, and she did not lift a finger to detain him.
“I’m not carin’. Do as you please,” she said with entire indifference.
“Oh,” said Morena, looking back at her, “I don’t stay where people are ‘not carin’.’”
She gave him an extraordinarily intelligent look. “I should say that’s the only place you’d be wantin’ to stay in at all—where you’re not exactly urged to come,” she said.
Morena flushed and his lids flickered. He was for an instant absurdly inclined to anger and made two or three steps away. But he came back.
He bowed and spoke as he would have spoken to a great lady, suavely, deferentially.
“Good-night. I wish I could think that you have enjoyed our talk as greatly as I have, Miss Jane. I should very much like to be allowed to repeat it. May I be stupidly personal and tell you that you are very beautiful?” He bowed, gave her an upward look and went out, finding his way cleverly among the dancers.
Outside, in the moonlit court, he stood, threw back his head and laughed, not loudly but consumedly. He was remembering her white face of mute astonishment. She looked almost as if his compliment had given her sharp pain.
Morena went laughing to his room in the opposite wing. He wanted to describe the interview to his wife.