had a wonderful evening with you… I’m having a very good time now. You were nice to me, Garry. I really was sorry not to see you again.”
“At the fountain of Marie de Médicis,” he said reproachfully.
“Yes. Flatter yourself, monsieur, because I did not forget our rendezvous. I might have forgotten it easily enough – there was sufficient excuse, God knows – a girl awakened by the crash of ruin – springing out of bed to face the end of the world without a moment’s warning – yes, the end of all things – death, too! Tenez, it was permissible to forget our rendezvous under such circumstances, was it not? But – I did not forget. I thought about it in a dumb, calm way all the while – even while he stood there denouncing me, threatening me, noisy, furious – with the button of the Legion in his lapel – and an ugly pistol which he waved in the air – ” She laughed:
“Oh, it was not at all gay, I assure you… And even when I took to my heels after he had gone – for it was a matter of life or death, and I hadn’t a minute to lose – oh, very dramatic, of course, for I ran away in disguise and I had a frightful time of it leaving France! Well, even then, at top speed and scared to death, I remembered the fountain of Marie de Médicis, and you. Don’t be too deeply flattered. I remembered these items principally because they had caused my downfall.”
“I? I caused – ”
“No. I caused it! It was I who went out on the lawn. It was I who came across to see who was painting by moonlight. That began it – seeing you there – in moonlight bright enough to read by – bright enough to paint by. Oh, Garry – and you were so good-looking! It was the moon – and the way you smiled at me. And they all were dancing inside, and he was so big and fat and complacent, dancing away in there!.. And so I fell a prey to folly.”
“Was it really our escapade that – that ruined you?”
“Well – it was partly that. Pouf! It is over. And I am here. So are you. It’s been nice to see you… Please call our waiter.” She glanced at her cheap, leather wrist watch.
As they rose and left the dining-room, he asked her if they were not to see each other again. A one-eyed man, close behind them, listened for her reply.
She continued to walk on slowly beside him without answering, until they reached the rotunda.
“Do you wish to see me again?” she enquired abruptly.
“Don’t you also wish it?”
“I don’t know, Garry… I’ve been annoyed in New York – bothered – seriously… I can’t explain, but somehow – I don’t seem to wish to begin a friendship with anybody…”
“Ours began two years ago.”
“Did it?”
“Did it not, Thessa?”
“Perhaps… I don’t know. After all – it doesn’t matter. I think – I think we had better say good-bye – until some happy hazard – like to-day’s encounter – ” She hesitated, looked up at him, laughed:
“Where is your studio?” she asked mischievously.
The one-eyed man at their heels was listening.
V
IN DRAGON COURT
There was a young moon in the southwest – a slender tracery in the April twilight – curved high over his right shoulder as he walked northward and homeward through the flare of Broadway.
His thoughts were still occupied with the pleasant excitement of his encounter with Thessalie Dunois; his mind and heart still responded to the delightful stimulation. Out of an already half-forgotten realm of romance, where, often now, he found it increasingly difficult to realise that he had lived for five happy years, a young girl had suddenly emerged as bodily witness, to corroborate, revive, and refresh his fading faith in the reality of what once had been.
Five years in France! – France with its clear sun and lovely moon; its silver-grey cities, its lilac haze, its sweet, deep greenness, its atmosphere of living light! – France, the dwelling-place of God in all His myriad aspects – in all His protean forms! France, the sanctuary of Truth and all her ancient and her future liberties; France, blossoming domain of Love in Love’s million exquisite transfigurations, wherein only the eye of faith can recognise the winged god amid his camouflage!
Wine-strong winds of the Western World, and a pitiless Western sun which etches every contour with terrible precision, leaving nothing to imagination – no delicate 58 mystery to rest and shelter souls – had swept away and partly erased from his mind the actuality of those five past years.
Already that past, of which he had been a part, was becoming disturbingly unreal to him. Phantoms haunted its ever-paling sunlight; its scenes were fading; its voices grew vague and distant; its hushed laughter dwindled to a whisper, dying like a sigh.
Then, suddenly, against that misty tapestry of tinted spectres, appeared Thessalie Dunois in the flesh! – straight out of the phantom-haunted void had stepped this glowing thing of life! Into the raw reek and familiar dissonance of Broadway she had vanished. Small wonder that he had followed her to keep in touch with the vanishing past, as a sleeper, waking against his will, strives still to grasp the fragile fabric of a happy dream.
Yet, in spite of Thessalie, in spite of dreams, in spite of his own home-coming, and the touch of familiar pavements under his own feet, the past, to Barres, was utterly dead, the present strange and unreal, the future obscure and all aflame behind a world afire with war.
For two years, now, no human mind in America had been able to adjust itself to the new heaven and the new earth which had sprung into lurid being at the thunderclap of war.
All things familiar had changed in the twinkling of an eye; all former things had passed away, leaving the stunned brain of humanity dulled under the shock.
Slowly, by degrees, the world was beginning to realise that the civilisation of Christ was being menaced once again by a resurgence from that ancient land of legend where the wild Hun denned; – that again the endless hordes of barbarians were rushing in on Europe out of their Eastern fastnesses – hordes which filled the 59 shrinking skies with their clamour, vaunting the might of Baal, cheering their antichrist, drenching the knees of their own red gods with the blood of little children.
It seemed impossible for Americans to understand that these things could be – were really true – that the horrors the papers printed were actualities happening to civilised people like themselves and their neighbours.
Out of their own mouths the German tribes thundered their own disgrace and condemnation, yet America sat dazed, incredulous, motionless. Emperor and general, professor and junker, shouted at the top of their lungs the new creed, horrible as the Black Mass, reversing every precept taught by Christ.
Millions of Teuton mouths cheered fiercely for the new religion – Frightfulness; worshipped with frantic yells the new trinity – Wotan, Kaiser and Brute Strength.
Stunned, blinded, deafened, the Western World, still half-paralysed, stirred stiffly from its inertia. Slowly, mechanically, its arteries resumed their functions; the reflex, operating automatically, started trade again in its old channels; old habits were timidly resumed; minds groped backward, searching for severed threads which connected yesterday with to-day – groped, hunted, found nothing, and, perplexed, turned slowly toward the smoke-choked
