Page:Burton Stevenson--The marathon mystery.djvu/113

Rh ping gently over it. Tambou! how I sigh for it!” and she stretched her arms above her head with a gesture of infinite longing.

Looking at her, I began to believe that I was dreaming all this; that I had fallen asleep in my chair and been transported to the land of Haroun-el-Raschid. I had never seen a woman like her—so full of colour, of passion, of…

A key rattled in the lock, the door opened and a man came in. It was quite in keeping with the dream—the enraged husband with naked cimeter—even here in New York it was hardly the proper thing to be discovered thus, though not till that instant had I thought of it.

“Ah, now,” I said to myself, “stilettos and pistols! you’re in a ticklish place, my friend.”

But before I could rise, Cecily had sprung from the couch and thrown her arms about his neck.

“Oh, coument ou yé, doudoux?” she asked, in a voice like—well, I have never heard anything to compare with it.

“Toutt douce, ché—et ou?” he answered, and kissed her; then he perceived me, seemingly for the first time, though this I somehow doubted. “Good-evening, sir,” he said, standing with his arm still about his wife and gazing at me with a look so sharp that I found myself for an instant unable to meet it, as though I had really been guilty of some fault.

His wife uttered in his ear a sentence so rapid that I was utterly unable to catch the words, but I suppose it explained the reason of my presence, for he turned to me instantly with outstretched hand.