The Splendid Folly Part 3

He seemed to understand.

"Forgive me," he said, with a sudden gentleness. "I wasn't laughing at you, but only at all the absurd conventions by which we cut ourselves off from many an hour of pleasant intercourse--just as though we had any too many pleasures in life! But if you wish it, I'll go back to my corner."

"No, no, don't go," returned Diana hastily. "It--it was silly of me."

"Then we may talk? Good. I shall behave quite nicely, I a.s.sure you."

Again the curiously familiar quality in his voice! She was positive she had heard it before--that crisp, unslurred enunciation, with its keen perception of syllabic values, so unlike the average Englishman's slovenly rendering of his mother-tongue.

"Of what are you thinking?" he asked, smiling. And then the swift, hawk-like glance of the blue eyes brought with it a sudden, sure sense of recognition, stinging the slumbering cells of memory into activity. A picture shaped itself in her mind of a bl.u.s.tering March day, and of a girl, a man, and an errand-boy, careering wildly in the roadway of a London street, while some stray sheets of music went whirling hither and thither in the wind. It had all happened a year ago, on that critical day when Baroni had consented to accept her as his pupil, but the recollection of it, and the odd, snubbed feeling she had experienced in regard to the man with the blue eyes, was as clear in her mind as though it had occurred only yesterday.

"I believe we have met before, haven't we?" she said.

The look of gay good-humour vanished suddenly from his face and an expression of blank inquiry took its place.

"I think not," he replied.

"Oh, but I'm sure of it. Don't you remember"--brightly--"about a year ago. I was carrying some music, and it all blew away up the street and you helped me to collect it again?"

He shook his head.

"I think you must be mistaken," he answered regretfully.

"No, no," she persisted, but beginning to experience some slight embarra.s.sment. (It is embarra.s.sing to find you have betrayed a keen and vivid recollection of a man who has apparently forgotten that he ever set eyes on you!) "Oh, you must remember--it was in Grellingham Place, and the greengrocer's boy helped as well."

She broke off, reading the polite negation in his face.

"You must be confusing me with some one else. I should not be likely to--forget--so charming a _rencontre_."

There was surely a veiled mockery in his composed tones, irreproachably courteous though they were, and Diana coloured hotly. Somehow, this man possessed the faculty of making her feel awkward and self-conscious and horribly young; he himself was so essentially of the polished type of cosmopolitan that beside him she felt herself to be as raw and crude as any bread-and-b.u.t.ter miss fresh from the schoolroom. Moreover, she had an inward conviction that in reality he recollected the incident in Grellingham Place as clearly as she did herself, although he refused to admit it.

She relapsed into an uncomfortable silence, and presently the attendant from the restaurant car came along the corridor and looked in to ask if they were going to have dinner on the train. Both nodded an affirmative.

"Table for two?" he queried, evidently taking them to be two friends travelling together.

Diana was about to enlighten him when her _vis-a-vis_ leaned forward hastily.

"Please," he said persuasively, and as she returned no answer he apparently took her silence for consent, for something pa.s.sed un.o.btrusively from his hand to that of the attendant, and the latter touched his hat with a smiling--"Right you are, sir! I'll reserve a table for two."

Diana felt that the acquaintance was progressing rather faster than she could have wished, but she hardly knew how to check it. Finally she mustered up courage to say firmly:--

"It must only be if I pay for my own dinner."

"But, of course," he answered courteously, with the slightest tinge of surprise in his tones, and once again Diana, felt that she had made a fool of herself and blushed to the tips of her ears.

A faint smile trembled for an instant on his lips, and then, without apparently noticing her confusion, he began to talk, pa.s.sing easily from one subject to another until she had regained her confidence, finally leading her almost imperceptibly into telling him about herself.

In the middle of dinner she paused, aghast at her own loquacity.

"But what a horrible egotist you must think me!" she exclaimed. "I've been talking about my own affairs all the time."

"Not at all. I'm interested. This Signor Baroni who is training your voice--he is the finest teacher in the world. You must have a very beautiful voice for him to have accepted you as a pupil." There was a hint of surprise in his tones.

"Oh, no," she hastened to a.s.sure him modestly. "I expect it was more that I had the luck to catch him in a good mood that afternoon."

"And his moods vary considerably, don't they?" he said, smiling as though at some personal recollection.

"Oh, do you know him?" asked Diana eagerly.

In an instant his face became a blank mask; it was as though a shutter had descended, blotting out all its vivacious interest.

"I have met him," he responded briefly. Then, turning the subject adroitly, he went on: "So now you are on your way home for a well-earned holiday? Your people must be looking forward to seeing you after so long a time--you have been away a year, didn't you say?"

"Yes, I spent the other two vacations abroad, in Italy, for the sake of acquiring the language. Signor Baroni"--laughingly--"was horror-stricken at my Italian, so he insisted. But I have no people--not really, you know," she continued. "I live with my guardian and his daughter. Both my parents died when I was quite young."

"You are not very old now," he interjected.

"I'm eighteen," she answered seriously.

"It's a great age," he acknowledged, with equal gravity.

Just then a waiter sped forward and with praiseworthy agility deposited their coffee on the table without spilling a drop, despite the swaying of the train, and Diana's fellow-traveller produced his cigarette-case.

"Will you smoke?" he asked.

She looked at the cigarettes longingly.

"Baroni's forbidden me to smoke," she said, hesitating a little. "Do you think--just one--would hurt my voice?"

The short black lashes flew up, and the light-grey eyes, like a couple of stars between black clouds, met his in irresistible appeal.

"I'm sure it wouldn't," he replied promptly. "After all, this is just an hour's playtime that we have s.n.a.t.c.hed out of life. Let's enjoy every minute of it--we may never meet again."

Diana felt her heart contract in a most unexpected fashion.

"Oh, I hope we shall!" she exclaimed, with ingenuous warmth.

"It is not likely," he returned quietly. He struck a match and held it while she lit her cigarette, and for an instant their fingers touched.

His teeth came down hard on his under-lip. "No, we mustn't meet again,"

he repeated in a low voice.

"Oh, well, you never know," insisted Diana, with cheerful optimism.

"People run up against each other in the most extraordinary fashion. And I expect we shall, too."

"I don't think so," he said. "If I thought that we should--" He broke off abruptly, frowning.

"Why, I don't believe you _want_ to meet me again!" exclaimed Diana, with a note in her voice like that of a hurt child.