Suddenly Susy felt Strefford’s eyes upon her.
“What’s the matter with me? Too much rouge?” she asked, passing her arm in his as they left the table.
“No: too little. Look at yourself,” he answered in a low tone.
“Oh, in these cadaverous old looking-glasses-everybody looks fished up from the canal!”
She jerked away from him to spin down the long floor of the sala, hands on hips, whistling a rag-time tune. The Prince and young Breckenridge caught her up, and she spun back with the latter, while Gillow-it was believed to be his sole accomplishment-snapped his fingers in simulation of bones, and shuffled after the couple on stamping feet.
Susy sank down on a sofa near the window, fanning herself with a floating scarf, and the men foraged for cigarettes, and rang for the gondoliers, who came in with trays of cooling drinks.
“Well, what next—this ain’t all, is it?” Gillow presently queried, from the divan where he lolled half-asleep with dripping brow. Fred Gillow, like Nature, abhorred a void, and it was inconceivable to him that every hour of man’s rational existence should not furnish a motive for getting up and going somewhere else. Young Breckenridge, who took the same view, and the Prince, who earnestly desired to, reminded the company that somebody they knew was giving a dance that night at the Lido.
Strefford vetoed the Lido, on the ground that he’d just come back from there, and proposed that they should go out on foot for a change.
“Why not? What fun!” Susy was up in an instant. “Let’s pay somebody a surprise visit—I don’t know who! Streffy, Prince, can’t you think of somebody who’d be particularly annoyed by our arrival?”
“Oh, the list’s too long. Let’s start, and choose our victim on the way,” Strefford suggested.
Susy ran to her room for a light cloak, and without changing her high-heeled satin slippers went out with the four men. There was no moon—thank heaven there was no moon!—but the stars hung over them as close as fruit, and secret fragrances dropped on them from garden-walls. Susy’s heart tightened with memories of Como.
They wandered on, laughing and dawdling, and yielding to the drifting whims of aimless people. Presently someone proposed taking a nearer look at the facade of San Giorgio Maggiore, and they hailed a gondola and were rowed out through the bobbing lanterns and twanging guitar-strings. When they landed again, Gillow, always acutely bored by scenery, and particularly resentful of midnight aesthetics, suggested a night club near at hand, which was said to be jolly. The Prince warmly supported this proposal; but on Susy’s curt refusal they started their rambling again, circuitously threading the vague dark lanes and making for the Piazza and Florian’s ices. Suddenly, at a calle-corner, unfamiliar and yet somehow known to her, Susy paused to stare about her with a laugh.
“But the Hickses—surely that’s their palace? And the windows all lit up! They must be giving a party! Oh, do let’s go up and surprise them!” The idea struck her as one of the drollest that she had ever originated, and she wondered that her companions should respond so languidly.
“I can’t see anything very thrilling in surprising the Hickses,” Gillow protested, defrauded of possible excitements; and Strefford added: “It would surprise me more than them if I went.”
But Susy insisted feverishly: “You don’t know. It may be awfully exciting! I have an idea that Coral’s announcing her engagement—her engagement to Nick! Come, give me a hand, Streff—and you the other, Fred-” she began to hum the first bars of Donna Anna’s entrance in Don Giovanni. “Pity I haven’t got a black cloak and a mask….”
“Oh, your face will do,” said Strefford, laying his hand on her arm.
She drew back, flushing crimson. Breckenridge and the Prince had sprung on ahead, and Gillow, lumbering after them, was already halfway up the stairs.
“My face? My face? What’s the matter with my face? Do you know any reason why I shouldn’t go to the Hickses to-night?” Susy broke out in sudden wrath.
“None whatever; except that if you do it will bore me to death,” Strefford returned, with serenity.
“Oh, in that case—!”
“No; come on. I hear those fools banging on the door already.” He caught her by the hand, and they started up the stairway. But on the first landing she paused, twisted her hand out of his, and without a word, without a conscious thought, dashed down the long flight, across the great resounding vestibule and out into the darkness of the calle.
Strefford caught up with her, and they stood a moment silent in the night.
“Susy—what the devil’s the matter?”
“The matter? Can’t you see? That I’m tired, that I’ve got a splitting headache—that you bore me to death, one and all of you!” She turned and laid a deprecating hand on his arm. “Streffy, old dear, don’t mind me: but for God’s sake find a gondola and send me home.”
“Alone?”
“Alone.”
It was never any concern of Streff’s if people wanted to do things he did not understand, and she knew that she could count on his obedience. They walked on in silence to the next canal, and he picked up a passing gondola and put her in it.
“Now go and amuse yourself,” she called after him, as the boat shot under the nearest bridge. Anything, anything, to be alone, away from the folly and futility that would be all she had left if Nick were to drop out of her life….
“But perhaps he has dropped already—dropped for good,” she thought as she set her foot on the Vanderlyn threshold.
The short summer night was already growing transparent: a new born breeze stirred the soiled surface of the water and sent it lapping freshly against the old palace doorways. Nearly two o’clock! Nick had no doubt come back long ago. Susy hurried up the stairs, reassured by the mere thought of his nearness. She knew that when their eyes and their lips met it would be impossible for anything to keep them apart.
The gondolier dozing on the landing roused himself to receive her, and to proffer two envelopes. The upper one
