“No, no, I can’t,” she almost groaned, and throwing back her head, she burst into a resonant cascade of laughter.
Oh, if but for a moment I could have had a human face! I bit my lips, tears rolled over my heated face; but it—that idiotic mask, on which everything was in its right place, nose, eyes, and lips—looked with a complacency staidly horrible in its absurdity. And when I went out, swaying on my flowered feet, it was long before I got out of reach of that ringing laugh. It was as though a silvery stream of water were falling from an immense height, and breaking in cheerful song upon the hard rock.
IV
Scattered over the whole sleeping street and rousing the stillness of the night with our lusty, excited voices, we walked home. A companion said to me:
“You have had a colossal success. I never saw people laugh so—— Halloa! what are you up to? Why are you tearing your mask? I say, you fellows, he’s gone mad! Look, he’s tearing his costume to pieces! By Jove! he’s actually crying.”
THE FRIEND
When late at night he rang at his own door, the first sound after that of the bell was a resonant dog”s bark, in which might be distinguished both fear that it might have been a stranger, and joy that it was his own master, who had arrived.
Then there followed the squish-squash of goloshes, and the squeak of the key taken out of the lock.
He came in, and taking off his wrappers in the dark, was conscious of a silent female figure close by, while the nails of a dog caressingly scratched at his knees, and a hot tongue licked his chilled hand.
“Well, what is it?” a sleepy voice asked in a tone of perfunctory interest.