Anna Lombard | Page 5

busy blowing the color jnto her exquisite skin, while her restless, impatient mind had been wandering far off in the sunny lands and speculating on those strange passions and emotions she was learning of through the lettered pages. And now, suddenly transported to the vivid glowing East, taken from that quiet solitude of study and placed in a whirlpool of human life and gayety in these gorgeous surroundings of Nature for nowhere on earth is there a more dazzling or brilliant arena for life to play itself out than in India she was ]ike an amazed, delighted, and clever child watching the curtain rise for the first time on the splendor of a pantomime.
We sat and talked through two entire dances, then as the strains of a particularly seductive waltz reached us I asked her if she would not give it to me, and she assented, with I fancied the slightest possible flush. She confessed to me later that though she had been carefully taught and made to practice dancing at home, this was her first "real ball." My heart beat as I put my arm round her and guided her among the dancers. I can not say or divine exactly the attractiveness of her manner; but there was a sort of appealing timidity in it that, united with such an obviously clever and gifted mind and such a sweet face and form, had in it a keen flattery.
I held her close to me, and with a perfect unity of step and motion we glided round the room in the great circle of other dancers. The warmth of the slight white arm on my shoulder and the white breast against my own, the sight of the fair, animated face, and a swift glance now and then from those passionate, blue eyes, seemed working on me like a subtle charm. I felt happy, contented; India was no longer a gorgeous but barren desert, life was not full of disappointment after all, and this ball was the greatest, the best, the most interesting function I had ever attended.
How sweet she was, this girl; what a soft, gentle voice; what smiling, caressing eyes, and what a low, slim waist that my arm encircled, and that seemed to yield so readily as if seeking and desiring protection! When the music ceased we found ourselves in the outer ring of dancers and iust beside the open windows. By a mutual impulse we both passed outside on to the low stone terrace into the soft heat which yet held the freshness of grass and flowers in it of the outer air. It was the same night, the same terrace as it had been when I was there an hour ago, only my companion was changed, and what a change that makes! Anna sunk even into the same chair the other girl had sat, and that was still there, but how different everything seemed now from when that hard, frivolous, worldly little doll occupied it. My heart beat more quickly than usual; and where, an hour ago, I had been silent and quite indifferent how I might appear to my companion, now my whole energy woke up in an effort and desire to please. Perhaps I succeeded, for smiles, blushes, and laughter swept by turns over the radiant, expressive face raised to mine in the subdued light of the veranda. She did not talk very much, seeming rather to wish to listen; but everything she did say was full of brightness and wit and a sympathetic intelligence that only comes from a really clever brain. With all her knowledge for I drew by my persistence from her reluctant lips the confession of one atudy after another wich which she was familiar she seemed full of diffidence of herself, and fixed her large eyes upon me, as she asked me questions, with the deference of an inquiring child. For the first time in my life I felt repaid for my hard youth given over to learning; yes, more repaid for those years of toil than when my name appeared heading the examination list. For the first time in my life the knowledge I had acquired seemed inexpressibly dear and valuable to me. She was listening, she was interested, she wanted to know and to hear things that I could tell her things that Lieutenant Jones and Captain Scrubbins could not have told her. She liked me, I was sure of it; she was thinking that I knew something, and she cared for these things that I cared for, far more than the last details of the pigeon-shooting match, the latest score of the Gymkhana, the newest development of the growing scandal round the major's wife, in all of which Jones and Scrubbins could easily have surpassed me. These