The Vision of Desire | Page 4

silver and jewels, the shining silks
and embroidery, with which the shrewd Swiss shopkeeper seeks to
open the purse of the foreigner. It seemed to chase the gaily
blue-painted trams as they sped up and down the centre of the town,
bestowing upon them a fictitious gala air, and danced tremulously on
the round, shiny yellow tops of the tea-tables temptingly arranged on
the pavement outside the pastrycook's.
It was still early afternoon, but already small groups of twos and threes
were gathered round the little tables. At one a merry knot of English
girl-tourists were enjoying an al fresco tea, at another staid Swiss
habitués solemnly imbibed the sweet pink or yellow sirop which they

infinitely preferred to tea, while a vivid note of colour was added to the
scene by the picturesque uniforms of a couple of officers of an Algerian
regiment who were consuming unlimited cigarettes and Turkish coffee,
and commenting cynically in fluent French on the paucity of pretty
women to be observed in the streets of Montricheux that afternoon.
Typically aloof, a solitary young Englishman was sitting at a table apart.
He was evidently waiting for some one, for every now and again he
leaned forward and glanced impatiently up the street, then, apparently
disappointed, settled himself discontentedly to the perusal of the
Continental edition of the Daily Mail.
He was rather an arresting type. His lean young face looked older than
his five-and-twenty years would warrant. It held a certain recklessness,
together with a decided hint of temper, and he was much too
good-looking to have escaped being more or less spoiled by every other
woman with whom he came in contact. Like many another boy, Tony
Brabazon had been rushed headlong from a public school into the four
years' grinding mill of the war, thereby acquiring a man's freedom
without the gradual preparation of any transition period--a fact which,
with his particular temperament, had served to complicate life.
Physically, however, he had come through unscathed, and his white
flannels revealed a lithe, careless grace of figure. When he lifted his
head to look up the street there was a certain arrogance in the
movement--a hint of impetuous self-will that was attractively
characteristic. The irritable drumming of long, sensitive fingers on the
table-top, while he scanned the head-lines of the paper, was
characteristic, too.
Suddenly a cool little hand descended on his restless one.
"You can stop beating the devil's tattoo on that table, Tony," said an
amused voice. "Here I am at last."
He sprang up, regarding the new-comer with a mixture of satisfaction
and resentment.

"You may well say 'at last'!" he grumbled. Then the satisfaction
completely swamping the resentment, he went on eagerly: "Sit down
and tell me why I've been deprived of your company for the whole of
this blessed day."
Ann Lovell sat down obediently.
"You've been deprived of my society," she replied with composure, "by
some one who had a better right to it."
"Lady Susan, I suppose?"--in resigned tones.
She assented smilingly.
"Yes. A companion-chauffeuse isn't always at liberty to play about with
the scapegrace young men of her acquaintance, you know. And this
morning my employer was seized with a sudden desire to visit Aigle,
so we drove over and lunched at a quaint old inn there. We've only just
returned."
As she spoke Ann stripped off her gloves, revealing a pair of slender
hands that hardly looked as though they would be competent to
manipulate the steering-wheel of a car. Yet there was more than one
keen-eyed, red-tabbed soldier whom she had driven during the war who
could testify to the complete efficiency of those same slim members.
"I'm dying for some tea, Tony," she announced, tossing her gloves on
to the table. "Let's go in and choose cakes."
Tony nodded, and they dived into the interior of the shop, and, arming
themselves with a plate and fork each, proceeded to spear up such as
most appealed to them of the delectable pâtisseries arranged in
tempting rows along shining trays. Then, giving an order for their tea to
be served outside, they emerged once more into the sunlit street.
One of the Algerian officers followed Ann's movements with an
appreciative glance. Had she been listening she might have caught his
murmured, "V'la une jolie anglaise, hein?" But she was extremely

unselfconscious, and took it very much for granted that she had been
blessed with russet hair which gave back coppery gleams to the
sunlight, and with a pair of changeful hazel eyes that looked sometimes
clearly golden and sometimes like the brown, gold-flecked heart of a
pansy. She was almost boyishly slender in build, and there was a sense
of swift vitality about all her movements that reminded one of the free,
untrammelled grace of a young panther.