The Lamp of Fate Part 20

"Well, she intruded on you that day in the fog, didn't she? So you'll be quits." She glanced impatiently round the box. "Where on earth has Davilof vanished to? Has he gone up in flame?"

Michael laughed involuntarily.

"Something of the kind, I fancy," he replied. "Anyway, he departed rather hurriedly."

"Poor Antoine!" Gillian spoke with a kind of humorous compa.s.sion. "He has a temperament. I'm glad I haven't."

"You have the best of all temperaments, Mrs. Grey," answered Michael, as they both followed Lady Arabella out of the box.

She looked at him inquiringly.

"The temperament that understands other people's temperaments," he added.

"How do you know?" she asked, smiling.

Lady Arabella was prancing on ahead down the corridor, and for the moment Michael and Gillian were alone.

"We artists learn to look for what lies below the surface. If your work is sincere, you find when you've finished a portrait that the soul of the sitter has revealed itself unmistakably."

Gillian nodded.

"I've been told you've an almost diabolical genius for expressing just what a man or woman is really like--in character, I mean--in your portraits."

"I can't help it," he said simply. "It comes--it reveals itself--if you paint sincerely."

"And do you--always paint sincerely?"

He laughed.

"I try to. Though once I got hauled over the coals pretty sharply for doing so. My sitter happened to be a pretty society woman, possessed of about as much soul as would cover a threepenny-bit, and when I'd finished her portrait she simply turned and rent me. 'I wanted a taking picture,' she informed me indignantly, 'not the bones of my personality laid bare for public inspection.'"

They were outside Magda's dressing-room by this time, and Virginie, who had flown to her nurseling the moment the dance was at an end, opened the door in response to Lady Arabella's preemptory knock. Gillian paused a moment before entering the room.

"Yours is a wonderful gift of perception," she said quietly. "It ought to make you--very merciful."

Michael looked at her swiftly. Her eyes seemed to be asking something of him--entreating. But before he could speak Lady Arabella's voice interposed remorselessly.

"Come in, you two; and for goodness' sake shut the door. There's draught enough to waft one to heaven."

There was no choice but to obey, and silently Quarrington followed Mrs.

Grey into the room.

CHAPTER VI

MICHAEL CHANGES HIS MIND

Magda's dressing-room at the Imperial Theatre was something rather special in the way of dressing-rooms. It had been designed expressly for her by the management, and boasted a beautifully appointed bathroom adjoining it where she could luxuriate in a refreshing dip immediately after the strain and fatigue of her work on the stage.

She had been very firm about the bathroom, airily dismissing a plaintive murmur from the manager to the effect that they were "somewhat crowded for s.p.a.ce at the Imperial."

"Then take another theatre, my dear man," she had told him. "Or build!

Or give the _corps de ballet_ one less dressing-room amongst them.

But if you want _me_, I must have a bathroom. If I dance, I bathe afterwards. If not, I don't dance."

Being a star of the first magnitude, the Wielitzska could dictate her own terms, and accordingly a bathroom she had.

She had just emerged from its white-tiled, silver-tapped luxury a few minutes before Lady Arabella, together with Gillian and Michael Quarrington, presented themselves at her dressing-room door, and they found her ensconced in an easy-chair by the fire, sipping a cup of steaming hot tea.

"I've brought Mr. Quarrington to see you," announced Lady Arabella. "I thought perhaps you'd like some other congratulations besides family ones."

"Am I permitted?" asked Quarrington, taking the hand Magda held out to him. "Or are you too tired to be bothered with an outsider?"

Magda looked up at him.

"I've very glad to see you," she said quietly.

She appeared unwontedly sweet and girlish as she sat there, clad in a negligee of some soft silken stuff that clung about the lissom lines of her figure, and with her satiny hair coiled in a simple knot at the nape of her neck. There was little or nothing about her to remind one of the successful ballerina, and Michael found himself poignantly recalling the innocent, appealing charm of the Swan-Maiden. It was difficult to a.s.sociate this woman with that other who had so unconsciously turned down his pal--the man who had loved her.

"Well? Did it go all right?"

Magda's eyes sought Gillian's eagerly as she put the question.

"Did it go?" Mrs. Grey's voice held all the unqualified enthusiasm any artiste could desire.

"Oh, Magda! It was wonderful! The most wonderful, beautiful dance I've ever seen."

"And you know it as well as we do," interpolated Lady Arabella tartly, but smiling pridefully in spite of herself.

"Still, of course, she likes to hear us _say_ it." Gillian championed her friend stoutly.

"The whole world will be saying it to-morrow," observed Quarrington quietly.

Here Virginie created a diversion by handing round cups of freshly brewed tea.

"You'll get nerves--drinking tea at this hour of the night," commented Lady Arabella, accepting a cup with alacrity, nevertheless.

"I take it very weak," protested Magda, smiling faintly. "It's the only thing I like after dancing."

But Lady Arabella was already deep in conversation with Gillian and Virginie--a conversation which resolved itself chiefly into a laudatory chorus regarding the evening's performance. In the background Magda's maid moved quietly to and fro, carefully putting away her mistress's dancing dresses. For the moment Michael and Magda were to all intents and purposes alone.

"I shall not easily forget to-night," he said rather low, drawing a chair up beside her.

"You liked it, then?" she asked hesitatingly--almost shyly.

"'Like' is hardly the word."