Rosa Mundi | Page 2

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 na?vely. "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 funny?"
"From her--yes," said Courteney.
"You don't like her?" The shrewd curiosity of a child who desires understanding upon a forbidden subject was in the question.
The man evaded it. "I have never seen her except in the limelight."
"And you didn't like her--then?" Keen disappointment sounded in her voice.
His heart smote him. The