The Streets of Ascalon

"Sentiment before dinner implies that you'll have no room for it after dinner. Here is your cocktail."

"Do you remember our first toast?" he asked, smiling.

"No."

"The toast to friendship?"

"Yes; I remember it."

She touched her lips to her glass, not looking at him. He watched her. After a moment she raised her eyes, met his gaze, returned it with one quite as audacious:

"I am drinking that same toast again – after many days," she said.

"With all that it entails?"

She nodded.

"Its chances, hazards, consequences?"

She laughed, then, looking at him, deliberately sipped from her glass, the defiant smile in her eyes still daring him and Chance and Destiny together.

When he took her out she was saying: "I really can't account for my mood to-night. I believe that seeing you again is reviving me. I was beastly stupid."

"My soporific society ought to calm, not exhilarate you."

"It never did, particularly. What a long time it is since we have seen each other. I am glad you came."

Seated, she asked the butler to remove the flowers which interrupted her view of Quarren.

"You haven't said anything about my personal appearance," she observed. "Am I very much battered by my merry bouts with pleasure?"

"Not much."

"You wretch! Do you mean to say that I am marked at all?"

"You look rather tired, Mrs. Leeds."

"I know I do. By daylight it's particularly visible… But – do you mind?"

Her charming head was bent over her grapefruit: she lifted her gray eyes under level brows, looking across the table at him.

"I mind anything that concerns you," he said.

"I mean – are you disappointed because I'm growing old and haggard?"

"I think you are even more beautiful than you were."

She laughed gaily and continued her dinner. "I had to drag that out of you, poor boy. But you see I'm uneasy; because imprudence is stamping the horrid imprint of maturity on me very rapidly; and I'm beginning to keep a more jealous eye on my suitors. You were one. Do you deny your guilt?"

"I do not."

"Then I shall never release you. I intend to let no guilty man escape. Am I very much changed, Mr. Quarren?" she said a trifle wistfully.

He did not answer immediately. After a few moments she glanced at him again and met his gaze.

"Well?" she prompted him, laughing; "are you not neglecting your manners as a declared suitor?"

"You have changed."

"What a perfect pill you are!" she exclaimed, vexed – "you're casting yourself for the rôle of the honest friend – and I simply hate it! Young sir, do you not understand that I've breakfasted, lunched and dined too long on flattery to endure anything more wholesome? If you can't lie to me like a gentleman and a suitor your usefulness in my entourage is ended."

He said: "Do you want me to talk shop with you? I get rather tired of my trade, sometimes. It's my trade to lie, you know."

She looked up, quickly, but he was smiling.

They remained rather silent after that. Coffee was served at table; she lighted a cigarette for him and, later, one for herself, strolling off into the drawing-room with it between her fingers, one hand resting lightly on her hip.

She seemed to have an inclination to wander about or linger before the marble fireplace and blow delicate rings of smoke at her own reflection in the mirror.

He stood a little distance behind her, watching her, and she nodded affably to him in the glass:

"I'm quite changed; you are right. I'm not as nice as I was when I first knew you… I'm not as contented; I'm restless – I wasn't then… Amusement is becoming a necessity to me; and I'm not particular about the kind – as long as it does amuse me. Tell me something exciting."

"A cradle song is what you require."

"How impudent of you. I've a mind to punish you by retiring to that same cradle. I'm dreadfully cross, too. Do you realise that?"

"I realise how tired you are."

"And – I'll never again be rested," she said thoughtfully, looking at her mirrored self. "I seem to understand that, now, for the first time… Something in me will always remain a little tired. I wonder what. Do you know?"

"Conscience?" he suggested, laughing.

"Do you think so? I thought it was my heart."

"Have you acquired one?"

She laughed, too, then glanced at him askance in the glass, and turned around toward him, still smiling.

"I believe I didn't have any heart when I first knew you. Did I?"

"I believe not," he said lightly. "Has one germinated?"

"I really don't know. What do you think?"

He took her cigarette from her and tossed it, with his own, into the fire. She seated herself on a sofa and bent toward the blaze, her dimpled elbows denting her silken knees, her chin balanced between forefinger and thumb.

Presently she said, not looking at him: "Somehow, I've changed. I'm not the woman you knew. I'm beginning to realise it. It seems absurd: it was only a few weeks ago. But the world has whirled very swiftly. Each day was a little lifetime in itself; a week a century condensed; Time became only a concentrated essence, one drop of which contained eons of experience… I wonder whether my silly head was turned a little… People said too much to me: there were too many of them – and they came too near… And do you know – looking back at it now as I sit here talking to you – I – it seems absurd – but I believe that I was really a trifle lonely at times."