51 you wish, my friend. Who cares to listen to what is said about a dancing girl in all this din of war? Who is interested?”
It was scarcely a question, yet her eyes seemed to make it so.
“Who cares?” she repeated impatiently. “Who remembers?”
“I have remembered you,” he said, meeting her intently questioning gaze.
“You? Oh, you are not like those others over there. Your country is not at war. You still have leisure to remember. But they forget. They haven’t time to remember anything – anybody – over there. Don’t you think so?” She turned in her chair unconsciously, and gazed eastward. “ – They have forgotten me over there – ” And her lips tightened, contracted, bitten into silence.
The strange beauty of the girl left him dumb. He was recalling, now, all that he had ever heard concerning her. The gossip of Europe had informed him that, though Nihla Quellen was passionately and devotedly French in soul and heart, her mother had been one of those unmoral and lovely Georgians, and her father an Alsatian, named Dunois – a French officer who entered the Russian service ultimately, and became a hunting cheetah for the Grand Duke Cyril, until himself hunted into another world by that old bag of bones on the pale and shaky nag. His daughter took the name of Nihla Quellen and what money was left, and made her début in Constantinople.
As the young fellow sat there watching her, all the petty gossip of Europe came back to him – anecdotes, panegyrics, eulogies, scandals, stage chatter, Quarter “divers,” paid réclames – all that he had ever read and heard about this notorious young girl, now seated there 52 across the table, with her pretty head framed by slender, unjewelled fingers. He remembered the gems she had worn that June night, a year ago, and their magnificence.
“Well,” she said, “life is a pleasantry, a jest, a bon-mot flung over his shoulder by some god too drunk with nectar to invent a better joke. Life is an Olympian epigram made between immortal yawns. What do you think of my epigram, Garry?”
“I think you are just as clever and amusing as I remember you, Nihla.”
“Amusing to you, perhaps. But I don’t entertain myself very successfully. I don’t think poverty is a very funny joke. Do you?”
“Poverty!” he repeated, smiling his unbelief.
She smiled too, displayed her pretty, ringless hands humorously, for his inspection, then framed her oval face between them again and made a deliberate grimace.
“All gone,” she said. “I am, as you say, here on my uppers.”
“I can’t understand, Nihla – ”
“Don’t try to. It doesn’t concern you. Also, please forget me as Nihla Quellen. I told you that I’ve taken my sister’s name, Thessalie Dunois.”
“But all Europe knows you as Nihla Quellen – ”
“Listen!” she interrupted sharply. “I have troubles enough. Don’t add to them, or I shall be sorry I met you again. I tell you my name is Thessa. Please remember it.”
“Very well,” he said, reddening under the rebuke.
She noted the painful colour in his face, then looked elsewhere, indifferently. Her features remained expressionless for a while. After a few moments she looked around at him again, and her smile began to glimmer:
“It’s only this,” she said; “the girl you met once in 53 your life – the dancing singing-girl they knew over there – is already an episode to be forgotten. End her career any way you wish, Garry, – natural death, suicide – or she can repent and take the veil, if you like – or perish at sea – only end her… Please?” she added, with the sweet, trailing inflection characteristic of her.
He nodded. The girl smiled mischievously.
“Don’t nod your head so owlishly and pretend to understand. You don’t understand. Only two or three people do. And I hope they’ll believe me dead, even if you are not polite enough to agree with them.”
“How can you expect to maintain your incognito?” he insisted. “There will be plenty of people in your very first audience – ”
“I had a sister, did I not?”
“Was she your sister? – the one who danced with you – the one called Thessa?”
“No. But the play-bills said she was. Now, I’ve told you something that nobody knows except two or three unpleasant devils – ” She dropped her arms on the table and leaned a trifle forward:
“Oh, pouf!” she said. “Don’t let’s be mysterious and dramatic, you and I. I’ll tell you: I gave that woman the last of my jewels and she promised to disappear and leave her name to me to use. It was my own name, anyway, Thessalie Dunois. Now, you know. Be as discreet and nice as I once found you. Will you?”
“Of course.”
“‘Of course,’” she repeated, smiling, and with a little twitch of her shoulders, as though letting fall a burdensome cloak. “Allons! With a free heart, then! I am Thessalie Dunois; I am here; I am poor – don’t be frightened! I shall not borrow – ”
“That’s rotten, Thessa!” he said, turning very red.
“Oh, go lightly, please, my friend Garry. I have no claim on you. Besides, I know men – ”
“You don’t appear to!”
“Tiens! Our first quarrel!” she exclaimed, laughingly. “This is indeed serious – ”
“If you need aid – ”
“No, I don’t! Please, why do you scowl at me? Do you then wish I needed aid? Yours? Allez, Monsieur Garry, if I did I’d venture, perhaps, to say so to you. Does that make amends?” she added sweetly.
She clasped her white hands on the cloth and looked at him with that engaging, humorous little air which had so easily captivated her audiences in Europe – that, and her voice with the hint of recklessness ever echoing through its sweetness and youthful gaiety.
“What are you doing in New York?” she asked. “Painting?”
“I have a studio, but – ”
“But no clients? Is that it? Pouf! Everybody begins that way. I sang in a café at Dijon for five francs and my soup! At Rennes I nearly starved. Oh, yes, Garry, in spite of a number of obliging gentlemen who, like you, offered – first aid – ”
“That is absolutely rotten of you, Thessa. Did I ever – ”
“No! For goodness’ sake let me jest with you without flying into tempers!”
“But – ”
“Oh, pouf! I shall not quarrel with you! Whatever you and I were going to say during the next ten minutes shall remain unsaid!.. Now, the ten minutes are over; now, we’re reconciled and you are in good humour again. And now, tell me about yourself, your 55 painting – in other words, tell me the things about yourself that would interest a friend.”
“Are you?”
“Your friend? Yes, I am –
