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

was still staring down at her.

“Who can say!”

“For three weeks? for four? for six?”

“_Je ne sais pas_,” he said briefly; “if I think too much I must come back, and that will not be wisely.”

“We must not stand here,” she said suddenly; “adieu, au revoir!”

“Yes,” he replied sombrely, “we must part now.”

He looked at her, and his eyes locked hers hard and fast for a long minute. She felt ill, faint, her breath seemed failing her. Then--

He seized her hand and pressed it so strongly against his lips that his lips parted and she felt his teeth against her flesh.

“_Je vous aime!_” he whispered, almost inaudibly. “Adieu!”


PART II

THE BEATING OF THE WAVES

[Illustration]

Chapter Ten

It was September in Munich. They stood together on the Maximilianbrücke, and, looking down into the gray and black turbulence of the Isar, felt themselves to be by contrast most tranquil and even-tempered. The little river rushed beneath them, forming a wealth of tiny whirlpools above its stone-paved way, its waters seeming to clash and struggle in a species of mimic, liquid warfare, and then, of a sudden, victor and vanquished fled wildly on together, giving place to other waves with their other personal scores to settle.

The banks on either side were beginning to show some touches of autumnal scarlet among those masses of vine whose ends trailed in the water below, and among the shrubs of the Promenade the same blood stain betrayed the summer’s death at the hands of the merciless frost king. The Peace Monument was there, piercing heaven with its golden wings; the Lucaskirche towered to the east; above them all sat the lofty Maximilianeum, that open-work crown of Munich, whose perfectly curved approach and double arcaded wings must joy the soul of every artist-nature that lingers near it.

“How old are you?” the man said suddenly.

Rosina jerked her consciousness up out of the bed of the Isar.

“No gentleman at home would ask a lady that,” she told him, thus showing great presence of mind.

He smiled and twisted his moustache.

“But I am not a gentleman at home,” he said pleasantly, “I am a gentleman travelling.”

“How old are you?”

“I have thirty-three years.”

“Well, I haven’t,” she said with decision; “you might think that I was forty, but that is only because I have had so much experience.”

He looked at her in a dubious, troubled way.

“I did not think that you had forty: I did not get that just perhaps. You have not truthfully forty, have you?”

Rosina laughed in unfeigned amusement.

“No, monsieur, I am not thirty even. I told you that if I seemed to be forty, it was because I had had so much experience.”

“So much experience?”

“Yes.”

“You feel that you have had experience?”

“I know it.”

“Experience as, _par exemple_, me?”

“Yes.”

He looked at her and smiled, shaking his head.

“Oh, madame, you say that, not at all knowing how much experience I have had.”

She raised her eyebrows slightly and turned to walk on. He followed at her shoulder, and when they came to the little stone stair that leads down to the Promenade, he halted and glanced expressively off among the paths and shade.

“There isn’t time,” she said, shaking _her_ head now.

He went down two steps alone, and then held out his hand with that irresistible smile; she hesitated, looked helplessly around, and then, like all women who hesitate, was forthwith lost, swallowed up, in the maze of those wandering paths. Von Ibn secured his cane well beneath his arm and lit a cigarette.

“Do I ever now ask you ‘may I’?” he said.

“You never did ask me ‘might you?’” she replied.

He drew two or three satisfied puffs.

“It is good to be so friends,” he commented placidly, and then he took his cane into his right hand again and swung it with the peculiarly vigorous swing which in his case always betrayed the possession of an uncommon degree of _bonne humeur_. “And now for your experience?” he asked after a little. “It is that which I will to hear.”

“Did you ever go to a masked ball?”

“_Mais, naturellement._”

“Well, so did I.” She paused to note the effect.

He threw a quick glance of undefined question at her.

“Masked?” he demanded.

“Oh, dear no! thickly veiled, and ’way upstairs in a gallery.”

“Were you greatly amused ’way upstairs in your gallery?”

“Yes, really; there were ever so many men there that I knew.”

“Did they come upstairs in the gallery?”

“No indeed, no one knew that I was there. But it interested me to see whom _I_ knew--”

“Was I there?” he interrupted.

“Oh, it wasn’t here! it was ever so long ago, while my husband was alive.”

“Did you see your husband?”

“Yes,” she said flushing, “and he was just like all the other men. He wore no mask, and he did not care one bit who might recognize him.”

“You had been better not gone,” said the man decidedly.

“Yes, I think so; I lost all my love for my husband that night, and killed all my faith in mankind forever.”

“Why did you be possessed to go?”

“I went because I did not want to be deceived in the way that many women are deceived.”

Von Ibn laughed.

“You know now all of everything, you think?”

“I know more than most other women do.”

“You would have known much more yet if you had worn a mask,” he told her very dryly.

She did not reply, and after a few minutes he continued:

“And now, when you know everything, and can no more be deceived, are you so most happy?”

“I do not know,” she said slowly.

“How have you lost your faith?” he inquired; “what in especial can no more deceive you?”

“I don’t believe in men,” she declared; “I don’t believe in anything that they say, nor in anything that they promise. And I don’t believe one bit in love!”

The man stopped by an empty bench.

“We have walked so long,” he remarked parenthetically; and she sat down, parenthetically also, so to speak.

“That is sad,” he said, digging in the gravel with his cane, “not to believe in love, or in the truth of a man! and you are a woman, too! Then there is no more truth and love for you.”

Rosina felt disheartened. A ready acquiescence in her views is always discouraging to a woman. What is the use of having views, if they are just tamely agreed to at once?

“I think perhaps men really mean what they say when they say it,” she began; “but, oh dear, they can’t stick to it afterwards. Why, my husband told me that my lightest wish should be his law, and then what do you think he did?”

“He did perhaps kiss you.”

“No, he went and bought a monkey!”

“What is a monkey?”

“Don’t you know what a monkey is?”

“If I know I will not trouble you to ask.”

“_C’est un singe,--affe_; now you know.”

“Oh, yes; I was thinking of a monk, and of how one told me that you had them not with you.”

Then he scraped gravel for a long time, while her mind wandered through a vista of monks and monkeys, and finally, entering the realm of the present day, paused over the dream of a hat which she had seen that morning in the Theatinerstrasse, a hat with a remarkably clever arrangement of one buckle between two wings; it was in the store that faced--

“I am an atheist,” said her companion, rising abruptly from his seat.

“Apropos of what?” she asked, decidedly startled, but rising too,--“apropos of the monkey?”

“_Comment?_” he said blankly.

“Nothing, nothing!” quickly.

They walked on slowly among the shadows which were beginning to gather beneath the trees; after a while he spoke again.

“I tell you just now that I am an atheist, and that is very true. Now I will make you a proposal and you shall see how serious I mean. I will change myself and believe in God, if you will change yourself and believe once more in men.”

“Can you believe in God or not just as you please?” she asked wonderingly.

“I am the master of myself,” he replied straitly; “if I say that I will pray to-night, I will pray. And you must say that you will believe,” he insisted; “you must again have a faith in men, and in their truth, and in honor.” Then he paused lengthily. “And in love?” he continued; “say that you will again believe in love?--you will, will you not? yes?”

“I don’t know that I can do it, even if I want to,” she said musingly; “looking on at life is so terribly disheartening, especially with us in America, you know.”

“Oh,” he said quickly, “but I do not want you to believe in love in America; I talk of here in Munich.”

“I suppose you mean yourself?”

“Yes,” he said most emphatically,--“me.”

She could not help laughing a little.

“You do really amuse me so much,” she apologized.

A workman in a dirty blouse and a forlorn, green Tyrolese hat, the cock’s plume of which had been all too often rained upon, passed close beside them. Von Ibn, nothing daunted, seized her gloved hand and pressed it to his lips; she freed it quickly and swept all their environage with one swift and comprehensive glance.

“If any one that knew us should see you!” she exclaimed.

He calmly gazed after the now distant workman.

“I did not know him,” he said; “did you?”

Then she was obliged to laugh again.

“You are always so afraid of the world,” he continued, remonstrating; “what does it make if one do see me kiss your hand? kissing your hand is so little kissing.”

He paused a moment and smiled whimsically.

“I did really laugh alone in my room the other night. I sit there smoking and thinking what a bad fright you have always when I will to take your hand and kiss it--you fear ever that some one shall not be there to see. Then I think, if I would give you a true kiss, that would be to your mind so awful,--the fear of a seeing, you know,--that we must then go in a cellar and bolt nine doors first, probably.”

He laughed, but she did not.

“When I go into a cellar with you,” she said coldly, “and allow nine doors bolted, you may kiss me, and I pledge you my word not to scream.”

A dead silence followed her remark, and lasted until Von Ibn broke it, saying abstractedly:

“One does go underground to visit the breweries;” after which he meditated some while longer before adding, “but they never would bolt the doors, I think.”

Rosina felt any comment on these words to be unnecessary and continued upon the even tenor of her way. They were close by the Luitpoldbrücke now, and she went towards the bridge, which lay upon their homeward route. Von Ibn followed her lead placidly until they were upon the opposite bank, when he suddenly halted.

“Have you lost