The Streets of Ascalon Part 12

"Do you think that your mouth could have possibly belonged to any other kind of a face except your own?" he said coolly.

"Is my mouth unusual?"

"Very."

"How is it unusual?"

"I haven't a.n.a.lysed the matter, but it is somehow so indescribable that I guessed very easily what the other features must be."

"Oh, flattery! Oh, impudence! Do you remember when Falstaff said that the lion could always recognise the true prince? Shame on you, Mr.

Quarren. You are not only a very adroit flatterer but a perfectly good sportsman after all--and the most gifted tormentor I ever knew in all my life. And I like you fine!" She laughed, and made a quick little gesture, partly arrested as he met her more than half way, touching the rim of his gla.s.s to hers. "To our friendship," he said.

"Our friendship," she repeated, gaily, "if the G.o.ds speed it."

"--And--its consequences," he added. "Don't forget those."

"What are they likely to be?"

"Who knows? That's the gamble! But let us recognise all kinds of possibilities, and drink to them, too. Shall we?"

"What do you mean by the consequences of friendship?" she repeated, hesitating.

"That is the interesting thing about a new friendship," he explained.

"n.o.body can ever predict what the consequences are to be. Are you afraid to drink to the sporting chances, hazards, accidents, and possibilities of our new friendship, Mrs. Leeds? _That_ is a perfectly good sporting proposition."

She considered him, interested, her eyes full of smiling curiosity, perfectly conscious of the swift challenge of his lifted gla.s.s.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'To our new friendship, Monsieur Harlequin!' she said lightly."]

After a few seconds' hesitation she struck the ringing rim of her gla.s.s against his:

"To our new friendship, Monsieur Harlequin!" she said lightly--"with every sporting chance, worldly hazard, and heavenly possibility in it!"

For the first time the smile faded from his face, and something in his altered features arrested her gla.s.s at her very lips.

"How suddenly serious you seem," she said. "Have I said anything?"

He drained his gla.s.s; after a second she tasted hers, looked at him, finished it, still watching him.

"Really," she said; "you made me feel for a moment as though you and I were performing a solemn rite. That was a new phase of you to me--that exceedingly sudden and youthful gravity."

He remained silent. Into his mind, just for a second, and while in the act of setting the gla.s.s to his lips, there had flashed a flicker of pale clairvoyance. It seemed to illumine something within him which he had never believed in--another self.

For that single instant he caught a glimpse of it, then it faded like a spark in a confused dream.

He raised his head and looked gravely across at Strelsa Leeds; and level-eyed, smiling, inquisitive, she returned his gaze.

Could this brief contact with her have evoked in him a far-buried something which had never before given sign of existence? And could it have been anything resembling aspiration that had glimmered so palely out of an ordered and sordid commonplace personality which, with all its talent for frivolity, he had accepted as his own?

Without reason a slight flush came into his cheeks.

"Why do you regard me so owlishly?" she asked, amused. "I repeat that you made me feel as though we were performing a sort of solemn rite when we drank our toast."

"You couldn't feel that way with such a thoroughly frivolous man as I am. Could you?"

"I'm rather frivolous myself," she admitted, laughing. "I really can't imagine why you made me feel so serious--or why you looked as though you were. I've no talent for solemnity. Have you?"

"I don't think so," he said. "What a terrible din everybody is making!

How hot and stifling it is here--with all those cloying gardenias.... A man said, this evening, that this sort of thing makes for anarchy....

It's rather beastly of me to sit here criticising my host's magnificence.... Do you know--it's curious, too--but I wish that, for the next hour or two, you and I were somewhere alone under a good wide sky--where there was no noise. It's an odd idea, isn't it, Mrs. Leeds.

And probably you don't share it with me."

She remained silent, thoughtful, her violet-gray eyes humorously considering him.

"How do you know I don't?" she said at last. "I'm not enamoured of noise, either."

"There's another thing," he went on, smiling--"it's rather curious, too--but somehow I've a sort of a vague idea that I've a lot of things to talk to you about. It's odd, isn't it?"

"Well you know," she reminded him, "you couldn't very well have a lot of things to talk to me about considering the fact that we've known each other only an hour or so."

"It doesn't seem logical.... And yet, there's that inexplicable sensation of being on the verge of fairly bursting into millions of words for your benefit--words which all my life have been bottled up in me, acc.u.mulating, waiting for this opportunity."

They both were laughing, yet already a slight tension threatened both--had menaced them, vaguely, from the very first. It seemed to impend ever so slightly, like a margin of faintest shadow edging sunlight; yet it was always there.

"I haven't time for millions of words this evening," she said. "Won't some remain fresh and sparkling and epigrammatic until--until----"

"To-morrow? They'll possibly keep that long."

"I didn't say to-morrow."

"I did."

"I'm perfectly aware of the subtle suggestion and subtler flattery, Mr.

Quarren."

"Then, may I see you to-morrow?"

"Utterly impossible--pitiably hopeless. You see I am frank about the heart-rending disappointment it is to me--and must be to you. But after I am awake I am in the hands of Mrs. Lannis. And there's no room for you in that pretty cradle."

"The next day, then?"

"We're going to Florida for three weeks."

"You?"

"Molly and Jim and I."

"Palm Beach?"