"Do you c-care for tea, Jim?... What a night! What a fright you gave

us.... There are croissants, too, and caviar.... I would not permit

anybody to awaken you; and I was dying to see you----"

"I am so sorry you were anxious about me. And I'm tremendously

hungry.... You see, Sengoun and I did not mean to remain out all

night.... I'll help you with that tea; shall I?..."

He still retained her hands in his; she smiled and flushed in a

breathless sort of way, and looked sometimes at the tea-kettle as

though she never before had seen such an object; and looked up at him

as though she had never until that moment beheld any man like him.

"The Princess Naïa has left us quite alone," she said, "so I must give

you some tea." She was nervous and smiling and a little frightened and

confused with the sense of their contact.

"So--I shall give you your tea, now," she repeated.

She did not mention her manual inability to perform her promise, but

presently it occurred to him to release her hands, and she slid

gracefully into her chair and took hold of the silver kettle with

fingers that trembled.

He ate everything offered him, and then took the initiative. And he

talked--Oh, heaven! How he talked! Everything that had happened to him

and to Sengoun from the moment they left the rue Soleil d'Or the night

before, this garrulous young man detailed with a relish for humorous

circumstance and a disregard for anything approaching the tragic,

which left her with an impression that it had all been a tremendous

lark--indiscreet, certainly, and probably reprehensible--but a lark,

for all that.

Fireworks, shooting, noise, and architectural destruction he admitted,

but casualties he skimmed over, and of death he never said a word. Why

should he? The dead were dead. None concerned this young girl

now--and, save one, no death that any man had died there in the

shambles of the Café des Bulgars could ever mean anything to Rue

Carew.

Some day, perhaps, he might tell her that Brandes was dead--not where

or how he had died--but merely the dry detail. And she might docket

it, if she cared to, and lay it away among the old, scarcely

remembered, painful things that had been lived, and now were to be

forgotten forever.

The silence of intensest interest, shy or excited questions, and the

grey eyes never leaving his--this was her tribute.

Grey eyes tinged with golden lights, now clear with suspense, now

brilliant at a crisis, now gentle, wondering, troubled, as he spoke of

Ilse Dumont and the Russian girl, now charmingly vague as her mind

outstripped his tongue and she divined something of the sturdy part he

had played--golden-grey eyes that grew exquisite with her pride in

him, tender with solicitude for him in dangers already passed

away--this was her tribute Engaging grey eyes of a girl with the splendour and mystery of

womanhood possessing her--attracting him, too, fascinating him,

threatening, conquering, possessing him--this, the Greek gift of Rue

Carew, her tribute.




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