VII The Ineffable Whirl
And so, in time, they came into temptation worse than his—the surge of the orchestra. He felt her arm tremble in his and drew it very close.
“Yes!” she gasped.
“Are you frightened?”
“I am gone mad!”
It was not yet their time, and he drew her to a nook behind the curtain of jasmines where they were alone.
“Why did thee bring me here?” she asked.
“I want to call you Mary Ann,” he said.
“Mad, too!” she laughed.
“For the first time in my life, I believe,” he said, “I am embarrassed. I feel like he must feel who has gayly stolen something and found it immeasurably precious. But, yet—”
“Hush! Thee is mad, too. Be content. Soon we shall wake and find it all a dream. But, me? Oh, John, John, John, let me dream this one dream and ever after sleep!”
The orchestra, as if answering her wish, opened a waltz. She cried out and put her hands close on her ears. But even then she swayed to the rhythm, she closed her eyes, and slowly moved to the beating of the arch tempting of the violins, as if it were all part of some spell. John Rem put his arm about her waist. She raised her head a moment and looked with a gasp of ecstasy fair into his eyes, then gave him her hands.
And, so, they danced—all the night. There were—yes—other times when they sat there behind the jasmines—but, for her, the vibration—the mad ecstasy never ceased.
Then, at last, it was all over. The orchestra had ceased. And they were once more behind the jasmine pillars, quite bereft of sense of other being than that which had been among the violins.
The touch of the feather of his chapeau on her cheek was enough. She lifted up her face to him. And when he had raised the mask, there was a look such as he had never seen even in his dreams of the fairest woman in the world. Damp tendrils of her hair flowed over her cheeks. Within its calyx of a lily was indeed the rose. And there it blushed and pulsed with the newest and the oldest emotions that have ever stirred a woman’s soul. Her lips begged kisses, hungry, insensible, mad, and were not denied.
But then she shuddered at her deed.
“Take me home!” she cried. “I am an outcast!”
“Yes,” whispered Bell-Bell’s voice behind him, “take her home—you brute!”
In the carriage she shuddered away from him.
“No!” she cried. “I am a monster! And you have let me be one!”
But when he had brought her in and was dejectedly taking his leave, the sudden passion came again as it had come that moment when he kissed her.
“Bell-Bell,” she whispered with large eyes and feverish lips, “ought I to see him—to the door? Just one instant, perhaps? I did not thank him, I was unkind to him. In the carriage I thought I hated him. He ought to have known better. He is of the world and knows. I did not. At the ball he said—he called me his—he—”
She whispered something in her very ear as if to keep the horrid knowledge from her own soul.
Bell-Bell nodded gravely.
“And I let him!”
The happy young wife pushed her toward the door.
“Yes—yes, dear, I know. We cannot help some things.”
“But—I wished him.”
“Is it possible?”
“Bell-Bell, I tempted him! I made my lips so—so! I think I pulled him down!”
“Good heavens! What wickedness!”
“Yes! Now—does thee think I had better let him say good-by—forever and ever?”
“Yes,” said Bell-Bell, with judicial airs, “if you are sure it is forever and ever. Fear not. I will wait right here—inside the door. And if I hear a sound, I’ll be on him like a lion. But only a minute for the brute. Mind!” She turned and bit her lips to keep them in order.
“Yes—oh, yes! I will be sure to be only a minute. And thee shall stand—I have quite forgotten thee all the evening—such is the result of wickedness—thee shall stand right here—inside and—just here—and listen to every word I say—and thee shall call me when the minute is up—unless—I come—before—”
“Yes, yes. Hurry!”
She went out swiftly, calling:
“John—is thee gone? Wait—wait—one minute!”
Bell-Bell went to bed.