“Yes. I’ve not been well for the past few days, and have missed several lessons. Now, like a good pupil, I’m endeavouring to make them up, you know.” And she laughed merrily.
“How many times a week do you go to the Academy?” I asked, surprised that she should have gone there that day, after what the hall-porter had told me.
“Twice, as a general rule,” she remarked; “but just now I’m rather irregular.”
“And so you prefer to cross the Park rather than ride by omnibus?”
“Certainly. Mother doesn’t approve of girls riding on the tops of ’buses, and says it’s fast. Therefore I’d much rather walk, for at this hour half London seems to be going from Piccadilly Circus to Hammersmith. I go right across, past the Serpentine, through Kensington Gardens to the Broad Walk, and out by the small gate next the Palace Hotel,” she added, with a sweep of her gloved hand.
Her eyes were lovely. As she stood there in the fading sunlight she seemed the fairest vision I had ever seen. I stood spell-bound by her marvellous beauty.
“And may I not act as your escort on your walk to-day?” I asked.
“Certainly. I have no objection,” she answered with graceful dignity, therefore I turned and walked beside her, carrying her music.
We took the road, which leads straight away to the Magazine, and crosses the Serpentine beyond. There in the yellow glow of the October sunset I lounged at her side and drank my fill of her loveliness. Surely, I thought, there could be no more beautiful woman in all the world. The Colonel’s strange warning recurred to me, but I laughed it to scorn.
As we passed beneath the rustling trees the sun’s last rays lit up her beautiful face with a light that seemed ethereal and tipped her hair until there seemed a golden halo about her. I was no lovesick youth, be it remembered, but a man who had had a bitter experience of the world and its suffering. Yet at that hour I was fascinated by the grace of her superb carriage, the suppleness of her figure, the charm of her sweet smile, and the soft music of her voice as she chatted to me.