A Woman's Will by Anne Warner (best 7 inch ereader txt) 📕

the window again. Her feminine instinct divined what was to be.

“And madame your friend, she is not ill, I hope?” he inquired politely, as the waiter removed his soup.

“No,” said the Irish girl, slowly, “or--that is,--yes, yes, she is.”

“And you must go at once to her,” he cried, springing up to draw back her chair, “I am so sad for that.”

Molly rose to her feet.

“I’m sorry, too,” she said, nodding a smiling thanks; “but you see I’ve no choice.” And then she went coffee-less away to laugh alone above-stairs.

Von Ibn sat down again and ate his fish in silence. He did not appear greatly perturbed over the twin-silence which was opposite him, rather seeming to reflect upon the fresh reconciliation which was building itself on such a substantial foundation of blushes.

Finally, when the fish was gone, he leaned somewhat forward and spoke very low.

“_Oh, que j’étais malheureux hier le soir!_” he said in a tone that trembled with feeling; “you can figure to yourself nothing of what it was! And this morning--when I send and find that you are gone!--I must know then that you were very furious of me.”

She raised her eyes, but to the window, not to him.

“I was,” she said briefly, but not the less tensely.

“When you are run last night--on the stairs like that, you know!--it should have been amusing to see you run so fast; but I was not any amused whatever. But why did you run?” he questioned, interrupting himself; “did you think to leave me always then, there, forever? For an instant I had the idea to go after you, but the _Portier_ was there, and I have thought, ‘What may he think?’”

“Oh,” she exclaimed, distressedly, “I altogether forgot him! What do you suppose he did think?”

Von Ibn shrugged his shoulders.

“_Rien du tout_,” he said easily; “he has think most probably that you have lost something from you--a pin or a button, you know. When a woman runs so, that is what every one knows.”

“Do they?”

“_Natürlich!_ I always know.”

“Oh!”

He finished his dinner in short order and then looked a smiling inquiry into her eyes.

“We shall go now on to the terrace for the coffee; yes?” he asked as he rose, and she rose too and went with him to where their little table was spread among the dusk and the roses. The band in the Stadtgarten was playing delightfully, and its sweetness came across water and park to search out their very souls. The Bodensee spread all beyond in a gray peace that seemed to bid the very leaves upon the trees to slumber. The steamers were coming to their harbor rest in answer to the flaming summons flung them by the searchlight at the head of the pier. They glided in in slow procession, shivered at anchor, and submitted to the lulling of the lake’s night breath.

Von Ibn rested his elbow on the table and his chin upon his hand. He looked dreamily out across the water for a long time before saying:

“You pardon my impoliteness then of last night? I am not come to trouble you here, only to ask that, and something else, and then I go again at once.”

“Yes, I will pardon you,” said Rosina gently. She too was looking thoughtfully out into the twilight on the water. “Only don’t do so again.”

“It is that that I would ask,” he went on, looking always at the lake, never at her; “that is what I would beg of you. Let us promise sincerely--let us take a vow never to be angry again. I have suffer enough last night both with my own anger and from yours. I will believe what you may tell me. And let us never be angry so again.”

“It is you who are so unreasonable,” she began.

“No,” he interrupted quickly, “not unreasonable. _Jamais je ne me fâche sans raison!_”

“Yes, you do too. Just think of last night, you were twice angry for nothing at all. It was terrible!”

He stared afar and seemed to reflect doubly.

“He was _bête_, that man,” he said at last.

“He wasn’t either. He was very nice; I don’t know how I should have gotten along coming over if I had not had him on the steamer to amuse me.”

“You could have done very well without him at Zurich,” said Von Ibn doggedly; “myself, I did not like him the first minute that I see him.”

“When did you first see him?”

“He was there at the table beside you.”

Rosina laughed a little. He turned towards her and smiled.

“Then you will forgive me?”

“Yes, this one time more. But never, never again.”

He turned to the lake and consumed five minutes in assimilating her remark. Then his look came back to her.

“I was awake so much last night that my eyes burn me; do they show it?”

She looked into his eyes, and they burned indeed--burned with a latent glow that forced her own to lower their lids.

“Do they look strangely to you?” he asked.

“No,” she said in a low tone.

“That is odd, because in all my life they have never look at any one as they look at you to-night.”

She drew herself together suddenly.

“Don’t talk foolishly,” she said distinctly.

“That was no foolishness; it is true.”

“It is just the sort of thing that all men say, and I like you because you do not say things like all other men.”

“Do all other men say to you that?”

“Not just that, but its equivalents. Men in general are not very original.”

He took out his cigarette case and contemplated its bas-relief of two silver nymphs for several seconds.

“You may,” said his companion, smiling.

“May what?”

“May smoke.”

“But I am going to, anyway.”

“Oh.”

He looked at her with an air of remonstrance.

“This is not your parlor,” he reminded her.

“No,” she said meekly; “I stand corrected.”

He lit the cigarette and threw the match into a rose-bush.

“I think that I will go and find Molly,” she suggested presently.

“Why?”

“I think that she would be able to leave madame by this time.”

“But if she can leave her then she will come to us, and I do not want her; do you?”

“I always want her.”

“That is absurd. Why do you want her? I never want another man when we speak together.”

“But I am very fond of Molly.”

“So am I most affectionate of my professor in Leipsic, but I never once have wished for him when I was with you.”

“That’s different.”

“No, it is quite one. Do not go for mademoiselle; I have something to say to you, and there is only to-night to say it.”

“What is it?”

“It is that I have really to go away. This time I must. I go to-morrow morning without fail.”

“I am so glad,” she exclaimed.

“Yes,” he said, with a quick glance; “is it really so that my going makes you pleasure? Truly I only come in return for your kindness of last night--when you send for me, you know. I think that I wish to repay. But now, if we are quite friends, I must go very early to-morrow in the morning.”

“I am glad that you are going,” she said quietly, “and you know why. And I shall be glad when we meet again,” she added in a lighter tone.

Then a long silence fell between them, while to their ears came the famous symphony of a famous composer. When the music ceased he spoke again.

“You will write to me?”

“I am not a letter writer.”

“But you will send me a few lines sometimes?”

“Are you going to write me?”

“_Si vous voulez de mes nouvelles._”

“Yes, I do.”

“I will tell you,” he said, tossing his cigarette into the lake; “I will send you a post-card, as I tell you before--you recall? yes.”

“No,” said Rosina, with decision, “I don’t want post-cards; you can write me in an envelope or not at all.”

He looked at her thoughtfully.

“I have some very small paper,” he said at last, “I can use that; I use it to write my family on.”

She almost laughed.

“That will be all right,” she said, “and I will answer on my correspondence-cards. They only hold half a dozen lines, and they have my monogram on them and are really very pretty.”

“You can write on the back too,” he suggested.

“I shan’t have any more to say than will go easily on the front, though.”

“And I shall see you next in August in Munich?”

“_Espérons!_” with a smile.

He stood up suddenly.

“Let us walk to the Garten,” he suggested; “it is good to walk after dinner a little.”

She rose too, very willingly, and they went towards the bridge that connects the Insel with the mainland.

“Did you love your husband?” he asked as they passed above the moat-like stream.

“Tremendously.”

“For long?”

“Until after we were married.”

He halted short at that.

“It was too bad to stop just then.”

Rosina felt that there were safer places to pause than there on the railroad tracks, and went on to the other side.

“It was too bad to stop at all,” she said, when he came too.

“_Assurément._”

They walked along the bank and came into the Stadtgarten, full of people laughing and talking with the liveliness that is so pleasant to see and so difficult, apparently, to import, unless it be in the steerage. Perhaps it is the Custom House which takes all the gayety out of the First and Second Classes before they can get ashore in America.

“We shall have to say our parting very soon,” the man said presently; “we have both travelled to-day, and I must go in a very early hour to-morrow.”

“Yes,” she replied, “I am much more weary to-night even than I was last night.”

“If we are tired we might again have trouble,” suggested her companion wisely. Then he added quickly, “But, no, never again,--I have promise that.”

“Shall we not return to the hotel now?” she asked.

“But why will you go back so quick?” he asked in an injured tone; “do you want to be so soon alone?”

“I thought that you wanted to be.”

“I want to sit down and not walk ever,” he said, pausing by an empty table in the open-air café. “What made you stop?” he went on, looking at her, she having paused where he did, naturally.

“I stopped because you did.”

“Because I did! that has no sense.”

“Then I’ll go on alone,” and she moved away.

He rejoined her in three steps, laughing.

“Why do you walk off like that?” he demanded.

“Because you said that there was no sense in my stopping.”

He looked at her in great amusement.

“_Que vous êtes tordante!_ I asked you why you stopped loving your husband?”

She stared.

“Why, it’s ever so long since we were speaking of that. How funny you are!”

He turned her back towards the empty table.