It being my turn to investigate the cellar I went. Down there in one of the alleys between bins and casks I saw Thusis moving with a lighted candle—a startling and charming apparition.
What she might be doing down there I could not guess, and she was so disturbingly pretty that I didn't think it best to go over and inquire. Maybe she was counting the bottles of Moselle to keep reproachful tabs on us; maybe she was after vinegar. No; I realized then for the first time that the girl was far too pretty for any man to encounter her by candle-light with impunity.
She did not see me—wouldn't have noticed me at all in the dim light had not my bunch of bottles clinked—both hands being loaded, and a couple of extra ones under each arm.
The sound startled her apparently; she turned quite white in the candle-light and stood rigid, listening, one hand pressing her breast.
"It is I, Thusis," I said. "Did I frighten you?"
She denied it rather faintly. She was distractingly pretty in her breathless attitude of a scared child.
I ought to have said something cheerful and matter of fact, and gone out of the cellar with my cargo of bottles. Instead I went over to her and looked at her—a silly, dangerous proceeding. "Thusis," I said, "I would not frighten you for one million dollars!"
Realizing suddenly the magnitude of the sum I mentioned I pulled myself together, conscious that I could easily make an ass of myself.
So, resolutely expelling from voice and manner any trace of sex consciousness, I said in the spirit of our best American novelists: "Permit me, Thusis, to recommend a small glass of this very excellent Moselle. Sipped judiciously and in moderation the tonic qualities are considered valuable as a nourishment to the tissues and nerves."
"Thank you," she said, slightly bewildered.