"I think I'll take a little journey up toward the craters to-morrow," Charter confided, after a moment. "They say that the weather is quiet and clean to the north of the mountain. One might ride up and try to reason with Pere Pelée——"
At this juncture Soronia entered the wine-shop from the little court, to fill the eyes and the goblets of the Americans. A dark, ardent, alluring face; flesh like dull gold, made wonderful by the faintest tints of ripe fruit; eyes that could melt and burn and laugh; a fragile figure, but radiantly abloom, and as worthily draped as a young palm in a richly blossoming vine. She made one think of a strange, regal flower, an experiment of Nature, wrought in the most sumptuous shadow of a tropic garden.... She was gone. Charter laughed at the drained look in Peter Stock's face.
"An orchid——" the latter began.
"Or a sunlit cathedral window."
"Will the visitation be repeated? Do I wake or sleep?"
"The years have dealt artistically in the little wine-shop," said Charter. "They say old Pere Rabeaut married a fille de couleur—daughter of a former Governor-General of Martinique."
"Some Daphne of the Islands, she must have been, since Pere Rabeaut does not seem designed to father a sunset.... It's my first glimpse of Soronia this voyage. She was beautiful in a girlish way last year.... She's in love, or she couldn't glow like that. I met Pere Rabeaut down in the city——"
Charter arose. "Perhaps the lover is across the court. I heard a whispering through the bird-songs—and one could not fail to note how she hurried back.... I must go on. The water is no better here than elsewhere."
"But the wine is," said Peter Stock. "Wait luncheon for me at the Palms.... By the way, how'd you like to take a little cruise—feel the Saragossa under you, running like a scared deer to hitch herself to the solid old Horn, built of rock and sealed with icebergs——"
"A clean thought, in this air—but the eventualities here attract. When Father Fontanel grows afraid for the city, well, it may not be scientific, but it's ominous.... I wanted to ask if it ever occurred to you that even the Morne d'Orange might fall into the sweeping range of Pelée's guns?"