Scarcely had she whispered this last word when the orchestra began the low rhythmic notes of a gypsy song she knew all too well, and at once a slim, spirit-like figure, clad in a gown that shone like silver in the moonlight, glided out upon the deck and began to dance.
“Jeanne!” The sound that escaped Florence’s lips was almost a cry. “Petite Jeanne! It can be no one else. No one can do those gypsy dances so divinely.”
As she sat there entranced, listening to the enchanting music, watching each gliding movement of the dancer, she became more and more convinced that her good pal of other days, the little French girl, Petite Jeanne, was really there within a stone’s throw of her, dancing as she had never danced before.
“But why?” she asked herself. “Why?”
Jeanne, who had been adopted by gypsies, had at last found true kinfolks in France. She had inherited an ancient castle. Florence believed her rich. And yet here she was, dancing as in those old golden days when they were all very poor and happy together.
Involuntarily Florence allowed her mind to drift back over days that were gone. She saw Jeanne dancing with a bear, before the hedges of France, saw her in the wilds of this very northland, and then in a poor tenement of Chicago. She rejoiced with her again as she recalled her success and triumph as a dancer in light opera.
“And now?” she whispered. She was unable to answer her own question, but her heart yearned to know.
“Perhaps she is still rich,” she thought. “This may be her own yacht. She may be dancing for her guests.” Of this she could not be sure. One resolve she made at once, Jeanne should not be disturbed by an old friend in soiled slacks.
“Very soon,” she thought, “the yacht will leave the dock, the music grow faint in the distance, and Jeanne, like a spirit, will float away into the night.”
“Like a spirit,” she repeated musingly. “Jeanne was always like that, always kind, a great friend, but never quite like other humans.”