Rosa Mundi | Page 2

it? Even Rosa Mundi thinks that. Did you
know that she is here? It is being kept a dead secret."
"Rosa Mundi!" Courteney started. He looked down into the innocent
face upraised to his with something that was almost horror in his own.
"Do you mean that dancing woman from Australia? What can a child
like you know of her?"
She smiled at him, the mystery still in her eyes. "I do know her. I
belong to her. Do you know her, too?"
A sudden hot flush went up over Courteney's face. He knew the woman;
yes, he knew her. Was it years ago--or was it but yesterday?--that he
had yielded to the importunities of his friend, young Eric Baron, and
gone to see her dance? The boy had been infatuated, wild with the lure
of her. Ah well, it was over now. She had been his ruin, just as she had
been the ruin of others like him. Baron was dead and free for ever from
the evil spell of his enchantress. But he had not thought to hear her
name in this place and on the lips of a child.

It revolted him. For she had utterly failed to attract his fancy. He was
fastidious, and all he had seen in her had been the sensuous charm of a
sinuous grace which, to him, was no charm at all. He had almost hated
her for the abject adoration that young Eric's eyes had held. Her art,
wonderful though he admitted it to be, had wholly failed to enslave him.
He had looked her once--and once only--in the eyes, judged her, and
gone his way.
And now this merry-eyed, rosy-faced child came, fairy-footed, over the
barrier of his reserve, and spoke with a careless familiarity of the only
being in the world whom he had condemned as beyond the pale.
"I'm not supposed to tell anyone," she said, with sapphire eyes uplifted
confidingly to his. "She isn't--really--here before the end of the week.
You won't tell, will you? Only when I saw you plodding along out here
by yourself, I just had to come and tell you, to cheer you up."
He stood and looked at her, not knowing what to say. It was as if some
adverse fate were at work, driving him, impelling him.
The soft eyes sparkled into laughter. "I know who you are," chuckled
the gay voice on a high note of merriment. "You are Randal Courteney,
the writer. It's not a bit of good trying to hide, because everybody
knows."
He attempted a frown, but failed in its achievement. "And who are
you?" he said, looking straight into the daring, trusting eyes. She was,
not beautiful, but her eyes were wonderful; they held a mystery that
beckoned and eluded in the same subtle moment.
"I?" she said. "I am her companion, her familiar spirit. Sometimes she
calls me her angel."
The man moved as if something had stung him, but he checked himself
with instinctive self-control. "And your name?" he said.
She turned out her hands with a little gesture that was utterly unstudied
and free from self-consciousness. "My name is Rosemary," she said. "It

means--remembrance."
"You are her adopted child?" Courteney was, looking at her curiously.
Out of what part of Rosa Mundi's strange, fretted existence had the
desire for remembrance sprung to life? He had deemed her a woman of
many episodes, each forgotten as its successor took its place. Yet it
seemed this child held a corner in her memory that was to last.
She turned her face to the sun. "We have adopted each other," she said
naïvely. "When Rosa Mundi is old, I shall take her place, so that she
may still be remembered."
The words, "Heaven forbid!" were on Courteney's lips. He checked
them sharply, but something of his original grimness returned as he
said, "And now that you are on the other side of the breakwater, what
are you going to do?"
She looked up at him speculatively, and in a moment tossed back the
short golden curls that clustered at her neck. She was sublimely young.
In the eyes of the man, newly awakened, she had the look of one who
has seen life without comprehending it. "I always like to get the other
side of things, don't you?" she said. "But I won't stay with you if you
are bored. I am going right to the end of the rocks to see the tide come
in."
"And be washed away?" suggested Courteney.
"Oh no," she assured him confidently. "That won't happen. I'm not
nearly so young as I look. I only dress like this when I want to enjoy
myself. Rosa Mundi says"--her eyes were suddenly merry--"that I'm
not respectable. Now, don't you think that sounds rather