■■■ — 1 —- . '--1 The TWICE AMERICAN | By ELEANOR M. INGRAM CHAPTER XVI. Rosalind. f&ome one was singing-some one who was a long distance from him. The melody was coaxing, plain tively minor, and sweet; a melody that twined into and about the senses as the tendrils of a vine will creep and cling about a lat tice. That was an absurd fancy! Music—lattices! What was wrong with his brain to find any connec tion between such alien matters? Perhaps he was bewildered by the thick darkness. Never before had lie experienced such long con tinued darkness. And theie-was nothing to do except listen to the song. After a time words commenced to break through the music, like flowers opening upon the vine. He listened attentively until he caught whole phrases and sen tences. The song was a love song. It was about a lover and a prin cess. She was to bind her hair and come to him. “Wait not to find your slippers, but, come in your naked feet!” Surely he, David Noel, should know that song! Why did the princess have naked feet? Why, of course, because she had given away her little white shoes to a beggar! His first coherent words, after a month of illness, were a whis pered plea for some one to buy slioes for the princess. “There is money,” he weakly insisted. "Plenty of money! 1 brin.gio it.'' A v<- like a breeze stirring the inusii v ne soothed him with a promise 10 do as he wished. “White shoes!” he stipulated. “And pink ones, and blue ones, with little tassels,” generously promised the caressing voice. 8at islied, he fell asleep. When he again awoke his mind was (dearer, but he was still in the darkness. Why did he always awiik'• at night, Noel wondered? And why were there no lumps? The horror of a new thought gripped him suddenly, wrenching a cry from him in his helplessness. Some one came to his side. “Mr. Noel?” questioned the professional tones of a nurse. ‘‘You are in pain?” “Am I—blind?” “Ob, no — merely badly bruised. ” “1 do not believe you!” he panted. “I’ve seen your breed with wounded men—you’re all liars! Where is the other?” “The other?” stiffly. “'nit girl. I heard her the last time—Miss Arloff. Get her!” A step both light and rapid, fingers that brushed liis hand like the brush of a bird’s wing. “I am here,” said the delicious, irregular voice of the dancing girl. “What ean I do?” “Give me your hand. T§11 me the truth! I am neither a child nor & coward. Am I blind?” The hand did not tremble in his grasp. “No. You are not even badly hurt. Soon you will be quite, quite well. Tomorrow the doctor will take off the bandage now over yeur eyes.” “Tt>.e it off now!” She hesitated. “Tomorrow-” “Now!” “It would have to go on again until the doctor comes.” “All right!” The bandage fell away like a black curtain. Dazzled, Noel saw through a mist of pain the face of Rosalind Arloff, luminous with beautiful compassion. Not even the face of the little Constance, as she held out to him her gift, was more lovely with pity. Never the hand of a com rade had lain so close and strong with comfort in his clasp as this frail hand of hers. After his long night, she came like sunrise on his heart. Sunrise, indeed 1 For the first time in his life the man met love and looked it in the face, and distinguished it from the boy’s dream. Love common as humanty, and as rich wifcfri life; love, not as a star, but as the fire on the hearth—this was the reve lation that shone upon him like the unbandaging of his eyes. A princess for his palace—was that the prize of life? No, but this girl’s palm warm upon his— this girl beside him for his wife! When she would have drawn •way, he moved his head in pro test. He did not speak. Once be fore he had spoken too soon. The nurse was present, too, and he was physically weak. He could I I'l i wait. Rosalind could also wait, it seemed; for she yielded with adorable patience to bis mute pro test, leaving her hand in bis. ' But now she did not look at him. No matter! lie could look at her; and the next time he awoke— He did not awake perfectly re covered, as lie had anticipated. He gradually emerged from that hazy realm of dreams into which lie bad drifted while looking at Rosalind Arloff, to find the band age again covering bis eyes. By lhut fact, he k.'iiv 1 hat the prom ised tomorrow of its removal had not yet arrived. Once more lie bad awakened to darkness ho! through with the brightness of music: this time the music of a violoncello. The play er was at some distance, he judged. The music was like none he ever before had heard; strong, like a strong heart in tumult, full of discord that fed the eager car as mere sweetness could not; bar baric, beautiful. Presently some one near his bed sighed and stirred. Instinc tively he knew it was someone who listened to that poignant music, also; instinctively he knew who it was. His heart beat in eager recognition of the oppor tunity. Only, were they alone? “Miss Arloff?” lie ventured. This time he was determined not to go too fast. “Yes,” came the prompt an swer, in the voice he already knew so well. “It is night?” “Yes, and no! It is morning, lull it is still night. It is half past three." “And 1 keep you watching so long? My nurse-?” “1 sent her to lie down, t—1 was not tired. I did not want to sleep tonight.” “Thank you.” He gathered hope from her presence. Not tired? Not wish to sleep? She was healthy, young, she worked hard, no doubt— surely, it was not insomnia which detained her by bis bedside. But he must not let her see that he suspected her awakening to love had been twin with his own. Not yet! He must go warily for a while; he had wounded her be fore; all but lost her by his haste. “Miss Arloff, may I come here again after I am well?” he pres ently asKed, quite humbly for David Noel. “The other night— I made a great many mistakes; I want to repair some of them. I would like to know your father better, and your-” “Abel,” she supplied the name quite seriously, unaware that he had forgotten the old man’s existence. “Abel makes the most beautiful music in the world, I think. You Hear him now, do you not? He is what they call am im provisatore. He plays as the melodies come to him; and when he ceases, he hardly knows what he has played. Often, he could not play it again. He cannot write music. But once, they say, iay father used to write it down as Abel played. He can no longer do that, although he loves to hear Abel improvise. So it is born and lost, all that loveliness. I cannot write it either, you see. To read music or play it, yes; to write it down by ear, no. That I was never taught, and I have not the gift.” She had ignored his attempted apology. Noel was not certain what that portended, but he ac cepted the diversion she offered. He had not intended to speak of Abel, but Abel would do. “I should like to hear you play.” “It would be better to hear hear Abel,” she returned. Noel smiled involuntarily, re calling the grim hostility of Rosa lind’s guardian, the night she had gone out with the stranger. “Do you think lie would play for me?” he asked. He fancied she smiled. A little laughter crept into her voice. “Oh, perhaps? Since you brought me safely home with the doll.” Still he insisted. “I should rather hear you.” She said a curious thing; not at all what he would havve ex pected to hear in reply to such a speech from any of the princess es he had met. “Have you always been senti mental, Mr. Noel?” He was unreasonably startled. He whose life had been hardest struggle and warfare, strong am bition and fighting, actual and mental, to attain his ends; to be asked that question! He could imagine what any of his associ Tates in the far south would have] replied loi that question: their derision and amusement at this! absurdity. Renito loved his mas ( ter with a slavish devotion, but Xoel knew bow the Indian would have answered it. He knew how, fJXHo' Valdez would havve laughed or Gil Granados. Yet—there was * the House of the Little Shoes! ’ Why was he here, now in this posi tion except, because this dancing1 girl vaguely resembled the child j who had walked across his heart? If memory was sentimentality,' perhaps | "Only once,” he said dryly, j quite careless of her understand-! ing him. j “That is enough,’’ she returned j her voice coming odly across the j distant music. "Yes, 1 will play for you; some time.” In that Oblique way be re ceived at once his pardon and his j permission to come at some fu ll uro day lo the home of Vasili j Arloff. Fbr the moment, it was * much. j “Thank you,” he accepted ' both. lie lay still for a time, listening to the sounds that indicated she | was engaged in some bit of *>cw ' ing. How much might he say now, he debated? How long must he wait ? There was his own work to he done, Already he had lin gered too long in this country; he j must return. He would delight in returning ,onlv. he must take his wife with him. Yes, he would j take this girl home to his villa; i take her and hers. lie fell to thinking of Vasili ' Arloff, of all the dazzling career sunk to an invalid’s chair and dependency upon a young girl’s labor and the support of an old man. This was the Vasili whose I furred coat the little David had j envied. And yet, how much still j remained with him. evevu with his shattered intellect,; as the ruins of a palace are more impos ing in their majesty than the whole completeness of an ordi nary building. To follow Vasili’s discourse was indeed like wan dering through the broken ar cades, the lofty, frescoed halls whose brilliancy lingered amid destruction, as a once royal house of thought. It was us if he and David Noel had passed on the stairs of life, one going down as the other toiled up, but where between those two travellers did Rosalind Arloff stand? Surely on some steady point to which, giving a hand to each, she might draw the two men to stand with her. Noel, in his darkness, and stlil confused by his illness, fan cied he saw her as he had seen her so many mornings, not posed aloft on the shining peak like Constance, but dancing along the common road; a way made beau tiful by her passing. And he had affronted, insulted her! “Street boy,” he murmured bitterly. “You spoke, Mr. Noel?” she asked. “No. I—listened to the mus ic,” he seized the nearest pretext. “And I! What does he play of, for you ? What does he make you see?” “ I am afraid I am stupid,” he deprecated. “I am not used to. that game. What does he make you saa, may I ask?” The laughter crept into her voice again. “I forget,” she apologized. “You see, we have always played like that, my father and Abel and I, played together a little game. What does he make me see, you ask? A Dutch garden, I think. Rows of tulips like painted silk, or china cups holding perfume in stead of tea, and a breeze that bends them this way or that. And then, a girl creature who runs drinking from each cup as a hum ming bird sips and flies; a girl in painted silks as bright as the tulips in the sun. And there in the sun among the tulips, she dances and dances—until Abel ceases playing.” “You saw all that?” amazed. “Perhaps, or dreamed I saw . it!” “You saw yourself,” he said slowly. “Yes, that is how you would look dancing in the sun. But not in a Holland garden. Rather in one richer, where there are fountains with lilies-” i His voice dropped into sience. Had he alarmed her? If she took flight, he was so helple.ss to pre vent or pursue her! But she , neither spoke nor moved, and presently he gained courage. “I am not gifted with fancy like you,” he said, “but if I may, can tell you of another picture that Abel’s music brings before me.” “Please do,” she permitted. “It is a painting,” he began, summoning the visionjbefore him against the darkness of his ban ! daged eyes. “A painting exceed [ ingy smooth in finish, of that ■ school which forbade a lady’s rf justie* v. t three ot.lia leader*. _, BULLY! " If Bilious, Constipated AW Oaa/JaaU, » IaI/A Feel grand : Clean up inside! 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