“I assure you Mademoiselle, there were some good people in the circus—some good women, even.”
“Good women, did you say?” screamed Mademoiselle Duval, “wearing tights and spangles, and turning somersaults!”
Toni bethought him of the time when there was an outbreak of scarlet fever in the circus company and how these same painted ladies in tights and spangles stood by one another and nursed each other and each other’s children day and night, and uttered no word of complaint or reproach. He knew more than Mademoiselle Duval on the subject of the goodness and the wickedness which dwell in the hearts of men. He told Mademoiselle Duval, however, the story of the outbreak of scarlet fever. He had a natural eloquence which stood him in good stead, and Mademoiselle Duval, who was one of the best women in the world and had a soft heart, although a sharp tongue, was almost brought to tears by Toni’s story.
“There was a softness, almost a tenderness, in her look.”
Just then Denise’s cavalier brought her back to her aunt, and Toni, jumping up, profoundly saluted Denise. His soul rushed into his eyes, those handsome, daredevil black eyes which the prim and proper Denise had secretly admired from her babyhood. She glanced back at him as she courtesied to him with great propriety, and something in her face made Toni’s pulses bound with joy. There was a softness, almost a tenderness, in her look which Toni, having some knowledge of the world, interpreted to his own advantage. Denise’s own heart was palpitating, not tumultuously like Toni’s, but with a gentle quickness which was new to her.
“Ah, Mademoiselle,” said Toni, calling Denise Mademoiselle for the first time, “how well I remember you in my happy days at Bienville, when you used to give me buns under the acacia tree.”
He stopped. A soft blush came into Denise’s fair cheeks. She smiled and looked at him and then away from him. Denise remembered the bench under the acacia tree and all that had happened there well enough. Denise knew then, and knew now, that when the Toni of those days gave up something to eat to a small girl, his feelings were very deeply engaged to her. She recollected in particular the first afternoon the Ravenels took tea with the Verneys that Toni had selected one beautiful, ripe plum, and after eying it longingly, had put his arm around her neck and put the plum in her mouth, and what he had said then. Her blushing now revealed it all to Toni.
Suddenly the band struck up a waltz, Toni politely asked Denise to favor him with her hand for the dance, and they went off together. The moon smiled softly at them, and even the electric lights had a kind of tenderness in their glare, when Toni, clasping Denise in his arms for the first time, began to whirl around with her to the rhythm of the music. He felt himself raised above the earth—all his fears, all his evil-doing had departed from him—he felt, poor Toni, as if he would never be afraid of Nicolas and Pierre again, and as if that waltz was a foretaste of Heaven for him.