The Lamp of Fate Part 5

"Are you the Fairy Queen?"

The voice came suddenly out of the dim, enfolding silence of the woods, and Magda paused in the midst of a final pirouette. A man was standing leaning against the trunk of a tree, watching her with whimsical grey eyes. Behind him, set up in the middle of a clearing amongst the trees, an easel and stool evidenced his recent occupation.

Magda returned the scrutiny of the grey eyes. She was no whit embarra.s.sed and slowly lowered her foot--she had been toe-dancing--to its normal position while she surveyed the newcomer with interest.

He was a tall, lean specimen of mankind, and the sunlight, quivering between the interlacing boughs above his head, flickered on to kinky fair hair that looked almost absurdly golden contrasted with the brown tan of the face beneath it. It was a nice face, Magda decided, with a dogged, squarish jaw that appealed to a certain tenacity of spirit which was one of her own unchildish characteristics, and the keen dark-grey eyes she encountered were so unlike the cold light-grey of her father's that it seemed ridiculous the English language could only supply the one word "grey" to describe things that were so totally dissimilar.

"They're like eyes with little fires behind them," Magda told herself.

Then smiled at their owner radiantly.

"Are you the Fairy Queen?" he repeated gravely.

She regarded him with increasing approval.

"Yes," she a.s.sented graciously. "These are my woods."

"Then I'm afraid I've been trespa.s.sing in your majesty's domain,"

admitted the grey-eyed man. "But your woods are so beautiful I simply had to try and make a sketch of them."

Magda came back to earth with prompt.i.tude.

"Oh, are you an artist?" she demanded eagerly.

He nodded, smiling.

"I'm trying to be."

"Let me look." She flashed past him and planted herself in front of the easel.

"_Mais, c'est bon!_" she commented coolly. "Me, I know. We have good pictures at home. This is a good picture."

The man with the grey eyes looked suitably impressed.

"I'm glad you find it so," he replied meekly. "I think it wants just one thing more. If"--he spoke abstractly--"if the Fairy Queen were resting just there"--his finger indicated the exact point on the canvas--"tired, you know, because she had been dancing to one of the Mortals--lucky beggar, wasn't he?--why, I think the picture would be complete."

Magda shot him a swift glance of comprehension. Then, without a word, she moved towards the bole of a tree and flung herself down with all the supple grace of a young faun. The artist s.n.a.t.c.hed up his palette; the pose she had a.s.sumed without a hint from him was inimitable--the slender limbs relaxed and drooping exactly as though from sheer fatigue. He painted furiously, blocking in the limp little figure with swift, sure strokes of his brush.

When at last he desisted he flung a question at her.

"Who taught you to pose--and to dance like that, you wonder-child?"

Magda surveyed him with that mixture of saint and devil in her long, suddenly narrow eyes which, when she grew to womanhood, was the measure of her charm and the curse of her tempestuous life.

"_Le bon dieu_," she responded demurely.

The man smiled and shook his head. It was a crooked little smile, oddly humorous and attractive.

"No," he said with conviction. "No. I don't think so."

The daylight was beginning to fade, and he started to pack up his belongings.

"What's your name?" asked Magda suddenly.

"Michael."

She looked at him with sudden awe.

"Not--not _Saint Michel_?" she asked breathlessly.

Virginie had told her all about "_Saint Michel_." He was a very great angel indeed. It would be tremendously exciting to find she had been talking to him all this time without knowing it! And the grey-eyed man had fair hair; it shone in the glinting sunset-light _almost_ like a halo!

He quenched her hopes with that brief, one-sided smile of his.

"No," he said. "I'm not Saint Michael. I'm only a poor devil of a painter who's got his way to make in the world. Perhaps, you've helped me, Fairy Queen."

And seeing that "The Repose of t.i.tania" was the first of his paintings to bring Michael Quarrington that meed of praise and recognition which was later his in such full measure, perhaps she had.

"I think I'm glad you're not a saint, after all," remarked Magda thoughtfully. "Saint's are dreadfully dull and superior."

He smiled down at her.

"Are they? How do you know?"

"Because Sieur Hugh is preparing to be one. At least Virginie says so--and she sniffs when she says it. So you see, I know all about it."

"I see," he replied seriously. "And who are Sieur Hugh and Virginie?"

"Sieur Hugh is my father. And Virginie is next best to _pet.i.te maman_.

Me, I love Virginie."

"Lucky Virginie!"

Magda made no answer, but she stood looking at him with an odd, unchildlike deviltry in her sombre eyes.

"Fairy Queen, I should like to kiss you," said the man suddenly. Then he jerked his head back. "No, I wouldn't!" he added quickly to himself. "By Jove, it's uncanny!"

Magda remained motionless, still staring at him with those long dark eyes of hers. He noticed that just at the outer corners they slanted upwards a little, giving her small, thin face a curiously Eastern look.

At last--

"Please kiss me, Saint Michael," she said.

For a moment he hesitated, a half-rueful, half-whimsical smile on his lips, rather as though he were laughing at himself. Then, with a shrug of his shoulders, he stooped quickly and kissed her.

"Witch-child!" he muttered as he strode away through the woods.

CHAPTER IV