It was large and luminous. The polished floor was swept by trains undulant and glistening. There were black coats from the lapels of which hung clusters of minute decorations; white shirts which the broad ribbons of higher orders enhanced. Bare shoulders and jewelled necks emerged from pearl embroidered corsages. Coils of hair, bitten by combs, gleamed with hereditary gems. There was the sheen of silk, of diamonds and of flesh. There was, too, an aroma of orris and flowers which, while a trifle voluptuous, was also a little heavy. But over it, above everything, there mounted that atmosphere which is the marked characteristic of such assemblies, the vaporisation of a sentiment shared by all, that of being among oneselves, and of being thereby generally and solidly united by nothing whatever.
In the centre of the room, couples were turning. Beyond, in a doorway that led to other salons, Sally stood talking to Cantire. Opposite, on the other side of the room, high windows that descended to the floor, opened on a balcony.
Welden moved on. He did not see Maud, and in search of her, he went to the nearest of these windows. In front of it, her back to the balustrade, the girl stood talking to Malakoff. She was looking down and did not see him, and Malakoff, who was facing her, did not either.
Tranquilly and courteously he approached. “Without indiscretion, if I am not interrupting—”
Maud looked up, and Malakoff looked around.
“I beg of you,” said the latter.
“Would you care for a turn?” asked Welden, who, as he spoke, nodded and smiled at both of them.
“Voilà!” Malakoff exclaimed. “You remind me. I also have my duties. Mademoiselle!” Moving aside, he bowed.
“Sans adieu,” Maud called to him over her shoulder, and accompanied by Welden passed on and in.
There Welden put an arm about her and together they began gliding and reversing with that ease, which, in all the cosmopolitan world of fashion, Americans best display. As they floated over the floor, others, who were also waltzing, stopped to observe them, noticing which they stopped themselves.
“Let us go in there,” said Welden, indicating the door at which, a moment before, Sally had stood.
It led to a smaller room, delicately fitted, where, however, they were not alone. Other people, Parisians with whom they were unacquainted, were seated or standing about. But, near the entrance, was an unoccupied sofa, on which Maud sank and Welden dropped.
The girl unfurled a fan. “Dearest, do you know, Malakoff talks really rather well.”
Welden nodded. “He isn’t such a bad sort. I won a pot of money of him tonight. By the way, I am in for a race. It is to be on the sixth—”
Further confidences were interrupted. In the doorway Cantire appeared, looking eagerly about.
“Oh, Miss Barhyte,” he cried, as he spotted the girl. “Won’t you give me this dance, or at least, what’s left of it?”
Maud, rising, took the boy’s arm, and Welden, who had also risen, dropped back.
The pot of money which he had won, while inconsequential, was an assistance. There had been a very inconveniencing crash in Wall Street. That morning he had meditated wiring there and having the proceeds of July coupons and dividends cabled to his Paris account. But now, meanwhile, the pot, however relatively small, was a help. Mechanically he felt of the pocket in which he had placed it.
As he did so, Maud reappeared. Other confidences ensued, which, as before, were interrupted. A new aspirant for a turn came to the girl. After the second, there was a third, then there were more. For in the minds of men, however obtuse, her beauty put a restlessness, a trouble, sometimes a hope. Those who were free coveted the possibilities it evoked; those who were not ruminated the savourousness of those possibilities.
“Dearest,” she said at last. “Shall we go?”
“Yes, à l’Anglaise,” Welden answered, expressing in the language of the land its neat equivalent for the English “French leave.”
“Dearest,” she remonstrated, “I at least must say a word.”
In search of Sally, on through the ball room she passed, surrounded by homages, enveloped by the glances of men.
Presently, after the word had been said, and her cloak had been put about her, she went down through a double hedge of lackeys to the perron below, where her lover waited and a footman bawled:
“The people of Madame la princesse de Solférino!”
Very gorgeous, very smiling, the princess, formerly Fanny Murray of New York, interrupted her luminous exit to remark to them: “Hasn’t it been jolly?”
When she, her glitter and her platitudes had gone, the footman bawled again, this time for Welden’s carriage.
About the entrance was a group of grooms, idlers, birds of the night. Down the avenue glowed the lamps of waiting cars and broughams. Before these a sergent-de-ville, his head bent, his hands behind his back, promenaded Napoleonically. Above, the moon hung, a round of butter in the sky. In the air was a sweetness, and from the open windows sank the swooning measures of a waltz.
Welden, after putting Maud into the carriage, drew from a pocket of his white waistcoat a chainless watch, from the stem of which her token, the sapphire, dangled.
“You have had no supper. Suppose we go somewhere and take a private room?”
With a quick intake of the breath, the girl answered: “Dearest, yes, and let us hurry.”
“The Café de la Paix,” Welden threw at the coachman’s back. “Et vivement!”
Then, in a moment, when he was beside her, the girl withdrew a glove, put her hand in his and whispered:
“Dearest, I am so happy that it frightens me.”
“Yes,” Welden replied. “I know. I, too, am afraid.”
“You!”
“In any love affair there are always three. The third is the unknown. It is
