"What's the matter?..."
According to the novelists love-making—"the approach of the sexes"—is an affair of infinite precision and fine intention; but according to nature, at least in those less self-conscious circles wherein are found the vast majority, it is one of the casual and apparently aimless forms of human contact. For a good hour these two played the ancient game, but the movements, the articulate ones, at least, were of the last degree of banality and insignificance—too trivial to recite even here.
That consciousness of being alone with a young man, which had come over Adelle on her entrance, developed gradually into a pleasant sense of intimacy with Archie. Miss Baxter did not come back to make the tea, as she usually did at this hour. Adelle was acutely aware that the young man had counted on getting this tea and really needed the nourishment. She wanted to give him food, to be kind to him. At last she ventured to suggest,—"Don't you know some place around here where we could get something to eat? I guess Miss Baxter isn't coming back this afternoon."
Archie instantly rose to the suggestion: he knew all the restaurants within the radius of two miles. And so, escorted by the young man, Adelle was soon entering a discreet small café, where, after infinite conversation with the proprietor, a tepid concoction was served with some excellent small cakes. Adelle then had one of the purest joys of her existence in watching the gusto with which the young Californian dispatched his tea and cakes even to the last crumbs of the brioche. She wanted to ask him to dine with her somewhere, but did not dare. In time they went back to the studio, which was now dark and still deserted, and after puttering for another half-hour Adelle departed in her car for the Villa Ponitowski. Nothing more momentous than what has been related happened, but both felt profoundly that something had happened. Archie, less daring or more skillful than his predecessor, did not press his advantage,—did not even ask to accompany the girl home,—and Adelle was left with the happy illusion of a mysterious human interest.
XXII
At last Adelle had a young man! He was not much of a young man in the eyes of Miss Comstock or Irene Paul, perhaps, but Adelle did not care for that. Incipient love awoke in the girl all her latent power of guile. This time she did not "give herself away" to "Pussy" nor to her companions, knowing instinctively that her toy would be taken away from her if it was discovered. For two months she managed almost daily meetings with Archie Davis without arousing the suspicion of any one, except possibly Miss Baxter, who did not consider the matter seriously. When late in May Miss Comstock took it into her head to motor to Italy for a trip to the Lakes and Venice, Adelle tried her best to escape, but failed. She departed sulkily, and managed to scrawl a letter and post it privately almost every day. Each mile that bore her farther from Paris filled her heart with gloom, and she made mad plans of escape. Her emotions having at last been stirred dominated her exclusively. She wanted Archie every moment. She wrote him to meet the party, casually, somewhere. But Archie, alas, was altogether too poor to follow his lady about Europe. She would have sent him the money for the journey if she had known how to do it. Instead, she sent him picture postcards of the monuments of southern France and northern Italy.
It was in Venice one languid afternoon in early June, as she was coming out from Cook's, where she had been to get her mail, that she heard her name,—"Adelle!... Miss Clark,"—and looking around discovered her lover leaning against a pillar of the piazza. He had somehow found the means to follow her, arriving that morning by the third-class train, and had hung around the piazza, confident that the girl must appear in this center of civic activity. They at once took to a gondola as the safest method of privacy. And it was in this gondola, behind the little black curtains of the felza, that Adelle received her second kiss from the lips of a man. But this time due preparation had been made: the kiss was neither unexpected nor undesired, and on her part, at least, the embrace had all the fervor of nature.
As they floated out upon the still waters of the lagoon beyond the lonely hospital, with the translucent silver haze of the magic city hanging above them, Adelle felt that heaven had been thrust unexpectedly into her arms. This was something far beyond the magic touch of her lamp, and all the sweeter because it came to her as a personal gift, independent of her fortune. At least she felt so. It is permissible to doubt if Archie Davis would have been sufficiently stirred by a penniless girl to have spent his recent remittance in chasing her to Italy, but such fine discriminations about young love are cruel. Sufficient for them both, in these gray and golden hours of the June afternoon in Venice, that they had come together. In time Adelle learned just how the miracle had been worked. Father Davis's remittance to take his son back to the ranch had at last arrived with a rather acid letter of parental instructions from the wine-grower. Archie with the true recklessness of youth had torn the letter to shreds and cashed the draft, purchased a third-class ticket for Venice, and put almost all that was left of the money into a much-needed suit of clothes. And now?
Adelle, with an unexpected acuteness, felt that Archie even in his present rehabilitated condition would be an object of suspicion to the keen eyes of Pussy Comstock, whom she was beginning to find troublesome. And she felt quite inadequate to explaining Archie plausibly. So it was decided between the lovers before the gondola returned to the city that they should meet clandestinely while the party remained in Venice. It was the family habit to take prolonged siestas after the second breakfast, when Adelle would be free to slip forth and join Archie in the cool recesses of a neighboring church. Other opportunity might arise. Young love is content with little—or thinks it will be. They parted with a final kiss, and Adelle thoughtfully paid the boatmen when they landed at the piazzetta.