The Streets of Ascalon Part 37

"Many people are already on the wing," observed Lacy.

"The Calderas have gone, I hear, and the Vernons and Mrs. Sprowl," added O'Hara.

"I suppose the Wycherlys will open Witch-Hollow in June," said Quarren carelessly.

"Yes. Are you asked?"

"No."

"Doubtless you will be," said Sir Charles. "Jim Wycherly is mad about aviation and several men are going to send their biplanes up and try 'em out."

"I'm goin'," announced O'Hara.

Quarren drew one card, and filled his house. Sir Charles laid aside his useless hand with a smile and turned to Quarren:

"Mrs. Leeds has spoken so often and so pleasantly of you that I have been rather hoping I might some day have the opportunity of knowing you better. I am very glad that the Legation asked me to-night."

Quarren remained absolutely still for a few moments. Then he said:

"Mrs. Leeds is very generous in her estimate of me."

"She is a woman of rare qualities."

"Of unusual qualities and rare charm," said Quarren coolly.... "I think, Karl, that I'll make it ten more to draw cards. Are you all staying in?"

Before the party broke up--and it was an early one--Lord Dankmere turned to Quarren.

"I'll drop in at your office, if I may, some morning," he said. "May I?"

"It will give me both pleasure and diversion," said Quarren laughing.

"There is not enough business in my office to afford me either. Also you are welcome to send for those pictures and store them in my back parlour until you can find a purchaser."

"It's an idea, isn't it?" mused his lordship. "Now I don't suppose you happen to know anything about such rubbish, do you?--pictures and that sort. What?"

"Why--yes--I do, in a way."

"The devil you do! But then I've always been told that you know something about everything----"

"Very, very little," said Quarren, laughing. "In an ignorant world smatterings are reverenced. But the fashionable Philistine of yesterday, who used to boast of his ignorance regarding things artistic and intellectual, is becoming a little ashamed of his ignorance----"

Dankmere, reddening, said bluntly:

"That applies to me; doesn't it?"

"I beg your pardon!--I didn't mean it that way----"

"You're right, anyway. I'm d.a.m.nably ignorant.... See here, Quarren, if I send over for some of those pictures of mine, will you give me your opinion like a good fellow before I make a bally a.s.s of myself by offering probable trash to educated people?"

"I'll tell you all I know about your pictures, if that is what you mean," said Quarren, much amused.

They shook hands as Sir Charles came up to make his adieux.

"Good-bye," he said to Quarren. "I'm off to Newport to-morrow. And--I--I promised to ask you to come with me."

"Where?"

"Mrs. Sprowl told me to bring you. You know how informal she is."

Quarren, surprised, glanced sharply at Sir Charles. "I don't believe she really wants me," he said.

"If she didn't she wouldn't have made me promise to bring you. She's that sort, you know. Won't you come? I am sure that Mrs. Leeds, also, would be glad to see you."

Quarren looked him coolly and unpleasantly in the eyes.

"Do you really believe that?" he asked, almost insolently.

Sir Charles reddened:

"She asked me to say so to you. I heard from her this morning; and I have fulfilled her request."

"Thank her for me," returned Quarren, level-eyed and very white.

"Which means?" insisted Sir Charles quietly.

"Absolutely nothing," said Quarren in a voice which makes enemies.

The following day Sir Charles left for Newport where Mrs. Sprowl had opened "Skyland," her villa of pink Tennessee marble, to a lively party of young people of which Strelsa Leeds made one. And once more, according to the newspapers, her engagement to Sir Charles was expected to be announced at any moment.

When Quarren picked up the newspapers from his office desk next morning he found the whole story there--a story to which he had become accustomed.

But the next day, the papers repeated the news. And it remained, for the first time, uncontradicted by anybody. All that morning he sat at his desk staring at her picture, reproduced in half-tones on the first page of every newspaper in town--stared at it, and at the neighbouring likeness of Sir Charles in the uniform of his late regiment; read once more of Strelsa's first marriage with all its sequence of misery and degradation; read fulsome columns celebrating her beauty, her popularity, her expected engagement to one of the wealthiest Englishmen in the world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Once more, according to the newspapers, her engagement to Sir Charles was expected to be announced."]

He read, also, all about Sir Charles Mallison, V.C.--the long record of his military service, his wealth and the dignified simplicity of his life. He read about his immense popularity in England, his vast but unostentatious charities, his political and social status.

To Quarren it all meant nothing more definite than a stupid sequence of printed words; and he dropped his blond head into both hands and gazed out into the sunshine. And presently he remembered the golden dancer laughing at him from under her dainty mask--years and years ago: and then he thought of the woman whose smooth young hands once seemed to melt so sweetly against his--thought of her gray eyes tinged with violet, and her hair and mouth and throat--and her cheek faintly fragrant against his--a moment's miracle--and then, the end----

He made a quick, aimless movement as though impatiently escaping sudden pain; cleared his sun-dazzled eyes and began, half blindly, to turn over his morning's letters--circulars, bills, business matters--and suddenly came upon a letter from her.

For a while he merely gazed at it, incredulous of its reality.

Then he opened the envelope very deliberately and still, scarcely convinced, unfolded the scented sheaf of note-paper:

"DEAR MR. QUARREN,