The Call of the Blood | Page 5

dress, and the most delicious Turkish coffee in London."
"Does Monsieur Delarey like Turkish coffee?"
"Loves it."
"Intelligently?"
"How do you mean?"
"Does he love it inherently, or because you do?"
"You can find that out to-night."
"I shall come."
He got up, put his pipe into a case, and the case into his pocket, and said:
"Hermione, if the analyst may have a word--"
"Yes--now."
"Don't let Monsieur Delarey, whatever his character, see now, or in the future, the dirty little beggar staring at the angel. I use your own preposterously inflated phrase. Men can't stand certain things and remain true to the good in their characters. Humble adoration from a woman like you would be destructive of blessed virtues in Antinous. Think well of yourself, my friend, think well of your sphinxlike eyes. Haven't they beauty? Doesn't intellect shoot its fires from them? Mon Dieu! Don't let me see any prostration to-night, or I shall put three grains of something I know--I always call it Turkish delight--into the Turkish coffee of Monsieur Delarey, and send him to sleep with his fathers."
Hermione got up and held out her hands to him impulsively.
"Bless you, Emile!" she said. "You're a--"
There was a gentle tap on the door. Hermione went to it and opened it. Selim stood outside with a pencil note on a salver.
"Ha! The little Townly has been!" said Artois.
"Yes, it's from her. You told her, Selim, that I was with Monsieur Artois?"
"Yes, madame."
"Did she say anything?"
"She said, 'Very well,' madame, and then she wrote this. Then she said again, 'Very well,' and then she went away."
"All right, Selim."
Selim departed.
"Delicious!" said Artois. "I can hear her speaking and see her drifting away consumed by jealousy, in the fog."
"Hush, Emile, don't be so malicious."
"P'f! I must be to-day, for I too am--"
"Nonsense. Be good this evening, be very good."
"I will try."
He kissed her hand, bending his great form down with a slightly burlesque air, and strode out without another word. Hermione sat down to read Miss Townly's note:
"Dearest, never mind. I know that I must now accustom myself to be nothing in your life. It is difficult at first, but what is existence but a struggle? I feel that I am going to have another of my neuralgic seizures. I wonder what it all means?--Your, EVELYN."
Hermione laid the note down, with a sigh and a little laugh.
"I wonder what it all means? Poor, dear Evelyn! Thank God, it sometimes means--" She did not finish the sentence, but knelt down on the carpet and took the St. Bernard's great head in her hands.
"You don't bother, do you, old boy, as long as you have your bone. Ah, I'm a selfish wretch. But I am going to have my bone, and I can't help feeling happy--gloriously, supremely happy!"
And she kissed the dog's cold nose and repeated:
"Supremely--supremely happy!"

II
Miss Townly, gracefully turned away from Hermione's door by Selim, did, as Artois had surmised, drift away in the fog to the house of her friend Mrs. Creswick, who lived in Sloane Street. She felt she must unburden herself to somebody, and Mrs. Creswick's tea, a blend of China tea with another whose origin was a closely guarded secret, was the most delicious in London. There are merciful dispensations of Providence even for Miss Townlys, and Mrs. Creswick was at home with a blazing fire. When she saw Miss Townly coming sideways into the room with a slightly drooping head, she said, briskly:
"Comfort me with crumpets, for I am sick with love! Cheer up, my dear Evelyn. Fogs will pass and even neuralgia has its limits. I don't ask you what is the matter, because I know perfectly well."
Miss Townly went into a very large arm-chair and waveringly selected a crumpet.
"What does it all mean?" she murmured, looking obliquely at her friend's parquet.
"Ask the baker, No. 5 Allitch Street. I always get them from there. And he's a remarkably well-informed man."
"No, I mean life with its extraordinary changes, things you never expected, never dreamed of--and all coming so abruptly. I don't think I'm a stupid person, but I certainly never looked for this."
"For what?"
"This most extraordinary engagement of Hermione's."
Mrs. Creswick, who was a short woman who looked tall, with a briskly conceited but not unkind manner, and a decisive and very English nose, rejoined:
"I don't know why we should call it extraordinary. Everybody gets engaged at some time or other, and Hermione's a woman like the rest of us and subject to aberration. But I confess I never thought she would marry Maurice Delarey. He never seemed to mean more to her than any one else, so far as I could see."
"Everybody seems to mean so much to Hermione that it makes things difficult to outsiders," replied Miss Townly, plaintively. "She is so wide-minded and has so many interests that she dwarfs everybody else. I always feel quite