The Streets of Ascalon Part 9

"Was it the bet that you were to be at liberty to--to kiss me?"

"I control absolutely an hour out of your life, do I not? I may use it as I please. You had better count out sixty seconds."

She looked down, biting her lip, and touched one hand against her cheeks, alternately, as though to cool them with the snowy contact.

He waited in silence for her reply.

"Very well," she said resolutely, "if you elect to use the first minute of your hour as frivolously as that, I must submit, I suppose."

And she began to count aloud, rapidly: "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, ni----"

Her face was averted; he could see the tip of one small ear all aflame.

Presently she ventured a swift glance around at him and saw that he was laughing.

"Ten, eleven, twelve," she counted nervously, still watching him; "thirteen, fourteen, fifteen--" panic threatened her; she doubled both hands in the effort of self-control and timed her counting as though the rapid beating of the tempo could hasten her immunity--"sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, one, two, three----"

"Play fair!" he exclaimed.

"I am trying to. Can't I say it that way up to ten, and then say thirty?"

"Oh, certainly. I've still half a minute. You'd better hurry! I may begin at any moment."

"Four--five--six--seven--m-m-m--thirty!" she cried, and the swift numbers fled from her lips fairly stumbling over one another, tumbling the sequence of hurrying numerals into one breathless gasp of: "Forty!"

His arm slid away from her waist; he stepped backward, and stood, watching her, one finger crooked, supporting his chin, the ironical smile hovering ever on his lips.

"Fifty!" she counted excitedly, her hands beating time to the counting; "--fifty-one--two--three--four--m-m-m--sixty!"--and she whirled around to face him with an impulsively triumphant gesture which terminated in a swift curtsey, arms flung wide apart.

"_Voila!_" she said, breathlessly, "I've paid my bet! Am I not a good sport, Harlequin? Own that I am and I will forgive your outrageous impudence!"

"You are a most excellent sport, madame!" he conceded, grinning.

Relief from the tension cooled her cheeks; she laughed bewitchingly and looked at him, exultant, unafraid.

"I frightened you well with my desperate counting, didn't I? You completely forgot to do--anything, didn't you? Voyons! Admit it!"

"You completely terrorized me," he admitted.

"Besides," she said, "while I was so busily counting the seconds aloud you couldn't very well have kissed me, could you? _That_ was strategy.

You couldn't have managed it, could you?"

"Not very easily."

"I really _did_ nonplus you, didn't I?" she insisted, aware of his amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Oh, entirely," he said. "I became an abject idiot."

She stood breathing more evenly now, the pretty colour coming and going in her cheeks. Considering him, looking alternately at his masked eyes and at his expressive lips where a kind of silent and infernal mirth still flickered, a sudden doubt a.s.sailed her. And presently, with a dainty shrug, she turned and glanced down through the gilt lattice toward the floor below.

"I suppose," she said, tauntingly, "you hope I'll believe that you refrained from kissing me out of some belated consideration for decency.

But I know perfectly well that I perplexed you, and confused you and intimidated you."

"This is, of course, the true solution of my motives in not kissing you."

She turned toward him:

"What motive?"

"My motive for not kissing you. My only motive was consideration for you, and for the sacred conventions of Sainte Grundy."

"I believe," she said scornfully, "you are really trying to make me think that you _could_ have done it, and didn't!"

"You are too clever to believe me a martyr to principle, madame!"

She looked at him, stamped her foot till the bangles clashed.

"Why _didn't_ you kiss me, then?--if you wish to spoil my victory?"

"You yourself have told me why."

"Am I wrong? Could you--didn't I surprise you--in fact, paralyse you--with astonishment?"

He laughed delighted; and she stamped her ringing foot again.

"I see," she said; "I am supposed to be doubly in your debt, now. I'd rather you _had_ kissed me and we were quits!"

"It isn't too late you know."

"It _is_ too late. It's all over."

"Madame, I have fifty-nine other minutes in which to meet your kindly expressed wishes. Did you forget?"

"What!" she exclaimed, aghast.

"One hour less one minute is still coming to me."

"Am I--have I--is this ridiculous performance going to happen again?"

she asked, appalled.

"Fifty-nine times," he laughed, doubling one spangled leg under the other and whirling on his toe till he resembled a kaleidoscopic teetotum. Then he drew his sword, cut right and left, slapped it back into its sheath, and bowed his wriggling bow, one hand over his heart.

"Don't look so troubled, madame," he said. "I release you from your debt. You need never pay me what you owe me."

Up went her small head, fiercely, under its flashing hair:

"Thank you. I pay my debts!" she said crisply.

"You decline to accept your release?"