A Woman's Will Part 48

"Yes," she said, very humbly.

"I think that nothing so bad could arrive," he went on, pulling his moustache and looking at her as he spoke, "because I am very much more strong than anything that may arrive at me, and the music is still much more strong than I. But if that _could_ arrive, that a trouble might kill my power, you can know how bad it would be for me."

She sat there, gazing always at her new conception of him. The tears which she had shed during his music filled her face with a sort of tender charm. It did not occur to her that any words of hers could be other than a desecration of those minutes.

"I am going now," he said presently, rising. "I have done no work since in June, but I feel it within me to write what I have played to-night."

He went over and took up the violin case and then he laid it down again and came back to her side.

"I shall kiss you," he said, not in any tone of either doubt or entreaty, rather with an imperativeness that was final. "In the music that I go to write to-night I want to put your eyes and also your kiss."

He put his arms about her and raised her to his bosom.

"_Regardez-moi!_" he commanded, and she lifted her eyes into his.

Their lips met, and the kiss endured.

Then he replaced her gently upon the sofa, took up the violin and went out.

Later that night she reproached herself bitterly.

"I ought to have a chaperone," she told her pillow in strict confidence.

But the kiss had a place now in her life, and the place, like the kiss itself, endured.

Von Ibn, in his room at the hotel, paused over his ma.n.u.script score, laid down his pen and closed his eyes.

"_Elle sera a moi!_" he murmured, and smiled.

For him also the kiss was enduring.

Chapter Thirteen

Jack was expected on the morrow, and on the day after the start for Genoa was to be made.

Under these cheerful circ.u.mstances Von Ibn came to call at the pension, and Amelia tapped at Rosina's door to announce to the "_gnadige Frau_"

that "_der Herr von Ibn ist im Salon_."

Rosina was dressed for dinner and when her visitor saw her gown with its long trailing skirt his face fell.

"We go to walk, yes?" he said, in a doubtful tone. She looked from the window out upon the rainy view.

"It's too wet," she said hopelessly; but the hopelessness was hypocritical, because she had resolved to never walk alone with him again.

He threw himself down upon the divan and entered into a species of gloomy trance. She took a chair by the window and unfolded her embroidery. Since the night of the music their mutual feelings had become more complicated than ever, and sometimes she wanted to get away with a desperation that was tainted with cowardice, while at other times she almost wondered if she should ever have the strength to go at all.

What he was meditating in these last days she could not at all divine.

He continued to have fits of jealousy and periods of long and absorbing thought. The new knowledge of the spirit which he revealed in his art was always with her and always held her a little in awe. Also the recollection of the Englischergarten and of her own overwhelming sensations there stayed by her with a persistence which knew no diminution.

"I wouldn't be off like that with him again for anything," she thought, as she drew a thread of red chenille from the skein upon her knee, and stole a glance at the dark face opposite her.

"Why may we not walk?" he asked, looking up as if she had spoken aloud.

"I will be _tres raisonable_."

"It isn't that," she replied, annoyed to feel herself blushing; "it is that it is so wet. I should ruin a skirt."

He started to argue the question but just then the salon door opened and Mrs. Jones came in with a book in her hand. He saw the book and she knew it. Mrs. Jones had evidently come to stay. The salon was public property, and Mrs. Jones had just as much right there as they had.

Nevertheless when she smiled and said, "Shall I disturb you?" they resented her question as a sarcasm unworthy of Genoa's proximity. Von Ibn stood up and said, "Certainly not," with a politeness which did credit to his bringing up, but Rosina as she threaded her needle took a vow to remember to _never_, in all time to come, pause for an instant even in a room where two people were talking together.

Mrs. Jones seated herself and then made the discovery that she had left her gla.s.ses in her own room; she rose at once and started to get them.

"Now we _must_ go out," he exclaimed, hurriedly, "we may not talk here with her. She speaks French as well as we, and German much better than you;" he referred to the cosmopolitan custom of altering one's tongue to disagree with an (unwelcome) third party.

Rosina was already huddling her work together in hot haste.

"Yes," she said, "I have a short skirt that I can wear." She rose and went towards the door. "I won't be five minutes," she said, turning the k.n.o.b.

Mrs. Jones was leisurely about coming back. She did not want to inconvenience them too much, but she did want to find the salon empty on her return, and she found it so.

While she was smiling and settling herself, they were going down the three flights of stairs and out of the large main door. The rain had ceased but it was still blackly and distinctly wet. Von Ibn had a tightly rolled umbrella which he held with a grasp that somehow suggested thoughts of their other promenade at nightfall.

"You can walk well, yes?" he said, as they turned in the direction of the Isar.

"In this skirt," she laughed, glancing down at her costume whose original foundations had been laid for golf, "in this skirt I am equal to anything!"

"But if you slip?" he supposed, anxiously.

"You ought to see the soles of my boots. I sent them to the little shoemaker in the Wurzerstra.s.se and he soled them with rubber half an inch thick."

"How much is an inch?" he asked.

"Twice the width of the rubber on my boots."

"No, but earnestly," he said, "is it a _centimetre_?"

"Two _centimetres_ and a half make one inch."

"You are droll, you English and Americans," he said, "you see nothing but your own way. I have heard Englishmen laugh as to how yet the Russians count their time different from the civilization part of the world, and then all England and America do their measure and weight in a manner so uneven that a European is useless to even attempt to understand it. There was a man there at Lucerne,--what did he say to me?

'A mark is a quarter, is it not?' that is what he asked. '_Mon Dieu_,'

I said, 'if you cut it in four pieces it is four quarters, and if you leave it whole it is whole,' then he looked to find me _bete_, and I was very sure that he was, and we spoke no more."

Rosina laughed.

"He meant a quarter of a dollar," she explained.

"I know that. You do not really think that I did not know that, do you?