The Moonlit Way Part 41

"Yes. I'm going to bed.... Tell Mr. Westmore that I'm not at all sure I shall meet him at the Ritz on Monday."

"He'll go, anyway."

"Will he? What devotion. What faith in woman! What a lively capacity for hope eternal! What vanity! Well, then, tell him he may take his chances."

"I'll tell him. But I think you might make a date with me, too, you little fraud!"

"Maybe I will. Maybe I'll drop in to see you unexpectedly some morning. And don't let me catch _you_ philandering in your studio with some pretty woman!"

"No fear, Thessa."

"I'm not at all sure. And your little model, Dulcie, is dangerously attractive."

"Piffle! She's a kid!"

"Don't be too sure of that, either! And tell Mr. Westmore that I _may_ keep my engagement. And then again I may not! Good-night, Garry, dear!"

"Good-night!"

Walking slowly back to extinguish the lights in the studio before retiring to his own room for the night, Barres noticed a piece of paper on the table under the lamp, evidently a fragment from the torn letter.

The words "Ferez Bey" and "Murtagh" caught his eye before he realised that it was not his business to decipher the fragment.

So he lighted a match, held the shred of letter paper to the flame, and let it burn between his fingers until only a blackened cinder fell to the floor.

But the two names were irrevocably impressed on his mind, and he found himself wondering who these men might be, as he stood by his bed, undressing.

XIV

PROBLEMS

The weather was turning hot in New York, and by the middle of the week the city sweltered.

Barres, dropping his brushes and laying aside a dozen pictures in all stages of incompletion; and being, otherwise, deeply bitten by the dangerously enchanting art of Mans.h.i.+p--dangerous as inspiration but enchanting to gaze upon--was very busy making out of wax a diminutive figure of the running Arethusa.

And Dulcie, poor child, what with being poised on the ball of one little foot and with the other leg slung up in a padded loop, almost perished. Perspiration spangled her body like dew powdering a rose; sweat glistened on the features and shoulder-bared arms of the impa.s.sioned sculptor, even blinding him at times; but he worked on in a sort of furious exaltation, reeking of ill-smelling wax. And Dulcie, perfectly willing to die at her post, thought she was going to, and finally fainted away with an alarming thud.

Which brought Barres to his senses, even before she had recovered hers; and he proclaimed a vacation for his overworked Muse and his model, too.

"Do you feel better, Sweetness?" he enquired, as she opened her eyes when Selinda exchanged a wet compress for an ice-bag.

Dulcie, flat on the lounge, swathed in a crash bathrobe, replied only by a slight but rea.s.suring flutter of one hand.

Esme Trenor sauntered in for a gossip, wearing his celebrated lilac-velvet jacket and Louis XV slippers.

"Oh, the devil," he drawled, looking from Dulcie to the Arethusa; "she's worth more than your amateurish statuette, Garry."

"You bet she is. And here's where her vacation begins."

Esme turned to Dulcie, lifting his eyebrows:

"You go away with him?"

The idea had never before entered Barres's head. But he said:

"Certainly; we both need the country for a few weeks."

"You'll go to one of those d.a.m.ned artists' colonies, I suppose,"

remarked Esme; "otherwise, washed and unwashed would expel shrill cries."

"Probably not in my own home," returned Barres, coolly. "I shall write my family about it to-day."

Corot Mandel dropped in, also, that morning--he and Esme were ever prowling uneasily around Dulcie in these days--and he studied the Arethusa through a foggy monocle, and he loitered about Dulcie's couch.

"You know," he said to Barres, "there's nothing like dancing to recuperate from all this metropolitan pandemonium. If you like, I can let Dulcie in on that thing I'm putting on at Northbrook."

"That's up to her," said Barres. "It's her vacation, and she can do what she likes with it----"

Esme interposed with characteristic impudence:

"Barres imitates Mans.h.i.+p with impunity; I'd like to have a plagiaristic try at Sorolla and Zuloaga, if Dulcie says the word. Very agreeable job for a girl in hot weather," he added, looking at Dulcie, "--an easy swimming pose in some nice cool little Adirondack lake----"

"Seriously," interrupted Mandel, twirling his monocle impatiently by its greasy string, "I mean it, Barres." He turned and looked at the lithely speeding Arethusa. "If that is Dulcie, I can give her a good part in----"

"You hear, Dulcie?" enquired Barres. "These two kind gentlemen have what they consider attractive jobs for you. All I can offer you is liberty to tumble around the hayfields at Foreland Farms, with my sketching easel in the middle distance. Now, choose your job, Sweetness."

"The hayfields and----"

Dulcie's voice faded to a whisper; Barres, seated beside her, leaned nearer, bending his head to listen.

"And _you_," she murmured again, "--if you want me."

"I always want you," he whispered laughingly, in return.

Esme regarded the scene with weariness and chagrin.

"Come on," he said languidly to Mandel, "we'll buy her some flowers for the evil she does us. She'll need 'em; she'll be finished before this amateur sculptor finishes his blooming Arethusa."

Mandel lingered:

"I'm going up to Northbrook in a day or two, Barres. If you change--change Dulcie's mind for her, just call me up at the Adolf Gerhardt's."

"Dulcie will call you up if she changes my mind."