«Don’t you care for me at all any more?»
«I wouldn’t have crossed the Atlantic to see you if I didn’t. But as soon as I looked over the Americans on the boat, I knew I couldn’t marry one. I’d just hate you, John, and the only fun I’d have out of it would be the fun of breaking your heart.»
She began to twist herself down among the cushions until she almost disappeared from view.
«I’ve lost my monocle,» she explained.
After an unsuccessful search in the silken depths she discovered the illusive glass hanging down the back of her neck.
«I’d love to be in love,» she went on, replacing the monocle in her childish eye. «Last spring in Sorrento I almost eloped with an Indian rajah, but he was half a shade too dark, and I took an intense dislike to one of his other wives.»
«Don’t talk that rubbish!» cried John, sinking his face into his hands.
«Well, I didn’t marry him,» she protested. «But in one way he had a lot to offer. He was the third richest subject of the British Empire. That’s another thing—are you rich?»
«Not as rich as you.»
«There you are. What have you to offer me?»
«Love.»
«Love!» She disappeared again among the cushions. «Listen, John. Life to me is a series of glistening bazaars with a merchant in front of each one rubbing his hands together and saying ‘Patronize this place here. Best bazaar in the world.’ So I go in with my purse full of beauty and money and youth, all prepared to buy. ‘What have you got for sale?’ I ask him, and he rubs his hands together and says: ‘Well, Mademoiselle, to-day we have some perfectly be-oo-tiful love.’ Sometimes he hasn’t even got that in stock, but he sends out for it when he finds I have so much money to spend. Oh, he always gives me love before I go—and for nothing. That’s the one revenge I have.»
John Chestnut rose despairingly to his feet and took a step toward the window.
«Don’t throw yourself out,» Rags exclaimed quickly.
«All right.» He tossed his cigarette down into Madison Avenue.
«It isn’t just you,» she said in a softer voice. «Dull and uninspired as you are, I care for you more than I can say. But life’s so endless here. Nothing ever comes off.»
«Loads of things come off,» he insisted. «Why, to-day there was an intellectual murder in Hoboken and a suicide by proxy in Maine. A bill to sterilize agnostics is before Congress——»
«I have no interest in humor,» she objected, «but I have an almost archaic predilection for romance. Why, John, last month I sat at a dinner-table while two men flipped a coin for the kingdom of Schwartzberg-Rhineminster. In Paris I knew a man named Blutchdak who really started the war, and has a new one planned for year after next.»
«Well, just for a rest you come out with me to-night,» he said doggedly.
«Where to?» demanded Rags with scorn. «Do you think I still thrill at a night-club and a bottle of sugary mousseaux? I prefer my own gaudy dreams.»
«I’ll take you to the most highly-strung place in the city.»
«What’ll happen? You’ve got to tell me what’ll happen.»
John Chestnut suddenly drew a long breath and looked cautiously around as if he were afraid of being overheard.
«Well, to tell you the truth,» he said in a low, worried tone, «if everything was known, something pretty awful would be liable to happen to me.»
She sat upright and the pillows tumbled about her like leaves.
«Do you mean to imply that there’s anything shady in your life?» she cried, with laughter in her voice. «Do you expect me to believe that? No, John, you’ll have your fun by plugging ahead on the beaten path—just plugging ahead.»
Her mouth, a small insolent rose, dropped the words on him like thorns. John took his hat and coat from the chair and picked up his cane.
«For the last time—will you come along with me to-night and see what you will see?»
«See what? See who? Is there anything in this country worth seeing?»
«Well,» he said, in a matter-of-fact tone, «for one thing you’ll see the Prince of Wales.»
«What?» She left the chaise-longue at a bound. «Is he back in New York?»
«He will be to-night. Would you care to see him?»
«Would I? I’ve never seen him. I’ve missed him everywhere. I’d give a year of my life to see him for an hour.» Her voice trembled with excitement.
«He’s been in Canada. He’s down here incognito for the big prize-fight this afternoon. And I happen to know where he’s going to be to-night.»
Rags gave a sharp ecstatic cry:
«Dominic! Louise! Germaine!»
The three maids came running. The room filled suddenly with vibrations of wild, startled light.
«Dominic, the car!» cried Rags in French. «St. Raphael, my gold dress and the slippers with the real gold heels. The big pearls too—all the pearls, and the egg-diamond and the stockings with the sapphire clocks. Germaine—send for a beauty-parlor on the run. My bath again—ice cold and half full of almond cream. Dominic—Tiffany’s, like lightning, before they close. Find me a brooch, a pendant, a tiara, anything—it doesn’t matter—with the arms of the house of Windsor.»
She was fumbling at the buttons of her dress—and as John turned quickly to go, it was already sliding from her shoulders.
«Orchids!» she called after him, «orchids, for the love of heaven! Four dozen, so I can choose four.»
And then maids flew here and there about the room like frightened birds. «Perfume, St. Raphael, open the perfume trunk, and my rose-colored sables, and my diamond garters, and the sweet-oil for my hands! Here, take these things! This too—and this—ouch!—and this!»
With becoming modesty John Chestnut closed the outside door. The six trustees in various postures of fatigue, of ennui, of resignation, of despair, were still cluttering up the outer hall.
«Gentlemen,» announced John Chestnut, «I fear that Miss Martin-Jones is much too weary from her trip to talk to you this afternoon.»
III
«This place, for no particular reason, is called the Hole in the Sky.»
Rags looked around her. They were on a roof-garden wide open to the April night. Overhead the true stars winked cold, and there was a lunar sliver of ice in the dark west. But where they stood it was warm as June, and the couples dining or dancing on the opaque glass floor were unconcerned with the forbidding sky.
«What makes it so warm?» she whispered as they moved toward a table.
«It’s some new invention that keeps the warm air from rising. I don’t know the principle of the thing, but I know that they can keep it open like this even in the middle of winter—»
«Where’s the Prince of Wales?» she demanded tensely.
John looked around.
«He hasn’t arrived yet. He won’t be here for about half an hour.»
She sighed profoundly.
«It’s the first time I’ve been excited in four years.»
Four years—one year less than he had loved her. He wondered if when she was sixteen, a wild lovely child, sitting up all night in restaurants with officers who were to leave for Brest next day, losing the glamour of life too soon in the old, sad, poignant days of the war, she had ever been so lovely as under these amber lights and this dark sky. From her excited eyes to her tiny slipper heels, which were striped with layers of real silver and gold, she was like one of those amazing ships that are carved complete in a bottle. She was finished with that delicacy, with that care; as though the long lifetime of some worker in fragility had been used to make her so. John Chestnut wanted to take her up in his hands, turn her this way and that, examine the tip of a slipper or the tip of an ear or squint closely at the fairy stuff from which her lashes were made.
«Who’s that?» She pointed suddenly to a handsome Latin at a table over the way.
«That’s Roderigo Minerlino, the movie and face-cream star. Perhaps he’ll dance after a while.»
Rags became suddenly aware of the sound of violins and drums, but the music seemed to come from far away, seemed to float over the crisp night and on to the floor with the added remoteness of a dream.
«The orchestra’s on another roof,» explained John. «It’s a new idea— Look, the entertainment’s beginning.»
A negro girl, thin as a reed, emerged suddenly from a masked entrance into a circle of harsh barbaric light, startled the music to a wild minor, and commenced to sing a rhythmic, tragic song. The pipe of her body broke abruptly and she began a slow incessant step, without progress and without hope, like the failure of a savage insufficient dream. She had lost Papa Jack, she cried over and over with a hysterical monotony at once despairing and unreconciled. One by one the loud horns tried to force her from the steady beat of madness but she listened only to the mutter of the drums which were isolating her in some lost place in time, among many thousand forgotten years. After the failure of the piccolo, she made herself again into a thin brown line, wailed once with sharp and terrible intensity, then vanished into sudden darkness.
«If you lived in New York you wouldn’t need to be told who she is,» said John when the amber light flashed on. «The next fella is Sheik B. Smith, a comedian of the fatuous, garrulous sort——»
He broke off. Just as the lights went down for the second number Rags had given a
