Phases of an Inferior Planet Part 14

"Thanks," responded that young lady, amiably; "but you can carry a music-roll, you know, which is much handier and a good deal tidier."

Mariana had turned to the "Andromeda." "Oh, Mr. Ponsonby!" she remarked, to one of the group surrounding it, "don't you uphold me in thinking the shadows upon the throat too heavy?"

Mr. Ponsonby protested that he would uphold her in any statement she might choose to make, so long as he was not expected to agree with her.

Mariana appealed to Mr. Nevins, who declared that he would agree with her in any matter whatsoever, so long as he was not expected to change his "Andromeda."

Mariana frowned. "Mr. Ardly thinks as I do--now don't you?"

Ardly sauntered over to them.

"Why, of course," he a.s.sented. "That shadow was put on with a pitchfork.

I am positively surprised at you, Nevins."

"On your conscience?" demanded Mariana.

"Haven't any," protested Ardly, indolently. "Left it in Boston. It is indigenous to the soil, and won't bear transplanting."

"Miss Ramsey brought hers with her," replied Mariana, with a smile. "It worries her dreadfully. It is just like a ball on the leg of a convict.

She has to drag it wherever she goes, and it makes her awfully tired sometimes."

"A good Bohemian conscience is the only variety worth possessing,"

observed Mr. Nevins. "It changes color with every change of scene and revolves upon an axis. Hurrah for Bohemia!"

"Hear! hear!" cried Mariana, gayly. She lifted a gla.s.s of sherry, and, lighting a cigarette, sprang upon the music-stool. Mr. Ponsonby drew up a chair and seated himself at the piano, and, blowing a cloud of smoke about her head, Mariana sang a rollicking song of the street.

As she finished, the door opened and Algarcife stood upon the threshold.

For a moment he gazed at the scene--at Mariana poised upon the music-stool with upraised arms, her hat hanging by an elastic from her shoulder, her head circled by wreaths of cigarette smoke, her eyes reckless. His look was expressive of absolute amazement. Innocent as the scene was in reality, to him it seemed an orgy of abandon, and there was not a man in the room who would not have understood Mariana at that moment better than he did.

"I beg your pardon, Nevins," he said, abruptly. "No, I won't come in."

And the door closed.

But Mariana had seen his face, and, with a flutter of impulse and a precipitate rush, she was after him.

"Mr. Algarcife!" Her voice broke.

He turned and faced her.

"What is it?"

"You--you looked so shocked!" she cried.

She stood before him, breathless and warm, the smoking cigarette still in her hand.

"Throw that away!" he said.

She took a step forward, struggling like a netted bird beneath the spell of his power.

"How absurd!" she said, softly. The cigarette dropped from her fingers to the floor.

He laughed. His eyes burned steadily upon her. Before his gaze her lashes wavered and fell, but not until she had seen the flashing of latent impulse in his face.

"But you dropped it," he said.

"Yes."

"Why did you?"

Mariana made a desperate effort at her old fearlessness. It failed her.

Her eyes were upon the floor, but she felt his gaze piercing her fallen lids. She spoke hurriedly.

"Because--because I did," she answered.

He came a step nearer. She felt that the pa.s.sion in his glance was straining at the leash of self-control. She did not know that desire was insurgent against the dominion of will, and was waging a combat with fire and sword.

She put up her hands.

"You are my friend," she said. Her tones faltered. The haze of idealism with which he had surrounded her was suffused with a roseate glow. He caught her hands. His face had grown dark and set, and the lines upon his forehead seemed ineffaceable.

Mariana was conscious of a sudden uplifting within her. It was as if her heart had broken into song. She stood motionless, her hands closing upon his detaining ones. Her face was vivid with animation, and there was a suggestion of frank surrender in her att.i.tude. He caught his breath sharply. Then his accustomed composure fell upon him. His mouth relaxed its nervous tension, and the electric current which had burned his fingers was dissipated.

At the other end of the corridor a door opened and shut, and some one came whistling along the hall.

"It is Mr. Sellars," said Mariana, smiling. "I recognize his whistling two blocks away, because it is always out of tune. He thinks he is whistling 'Robin Hood,' but he is mistaken."

"Is he?" asked Anthony, abstractedly. His mind was less agile than Mariana's, and he found more difficulty in spanning the s.p.a.ce between sentiment and comic opera.

Mr. Sellars greeted them cheerfully and pa.s.sed on.

"I must go," said Mariana. "I promised to dine with Miss Ramsey."

There was an aggrieved note in her voice, but it had no connection with Anthony. With the pa.s.sing of the enjoyment of emotion for the sake of the mental exaltation which accompanied it, the dramatic instinct rea.s.serted itself. She even experienced a mild resentment against fate that the emotional alt.i.tude she had craved should have been revealed to her in the damp and unventilated corridor of The Gotham apartment-house.

At a glance from Anthony the resentment would have vanished, and Mariana have been swept once more into a maze of romanticism. But he did not look at her, and the half-conscious demand for scenic effects was unsatisfied.

"Yes," said Anthony, "it is late." His voice sounded hushed and constrained, and, as he stood aside to allow her to pa.s.s, he looked beyond and not at the girl.

She turned from him and entered her room.

CHAPTER X

Mariana found Miss Ramsey lying at length upon the hearth-rug in her tiny sitting-room, her head resting upon an eider-down cushion.

At the girl's entrance she looked up nervously. "I can't rest," she said, with a plaintive intonation, "and I am so tired. But when I shut my eyes I see spread before me all the work I've got to do to-morrow."

She sat up, pa.s.sing her hand restlessly across her forehead. In her appearance there might be detected an almost fierce renunciation of youth. Her gown was exaggerated in severity, and her colorless and uncurled hair was strained from her forehead and worn in a tight knot upon the crown of her head. The prettiness of her face was almost aggressive amid contrasting disfigurements.