Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/337



HE must have been sitting there for half an hour when the smile vanished suddenly and the fingers fumbling with the silver bag grew still. Her face assumed an expression of rigidity, the look of one who has seen something in which he is not quite able to believe.

Moving toward her down the long vista of crystal and brocade curtains came a man. He was a big man, tall, massive, handsome in a florid way. He must have been in his middle fifties, although there was but little gray in the thick black hair which he wore rather long in a fashion calculated to attract the notice of. He wore horn-rimmed spectacles and a flowing black tie in striking contrast to the gray neatness of his cutaway and checkered waistcoat. Unmistakably he was an American. His manner carried the same freedom, the identical naïve simplicity which characterized the figure of the vigorous Ellen. He possessed the same overflowing vitality. Even as Lily stood, silently, with her back to the tragic spectacle of the square, the vitality overflowed suddenly in a great explosive laugh and a slap on the back of a friend he had encountered in the throng. Above the subdued murmur, the sound of his booming voice reached her.

"Well, well, well! . . . And what are you doing in wicked Paris? Come to fix up the peace, I suppose!"

The answer of the stranger was not audible. The pair withdrew from the path of the procession and talked for a moment. The conversation was punctuated from time to time by the sudden bursts of laughter from the man in the checkered waistcoat.

In her corner Lily leaned forward a little in order to see more clearly the figure which had fascinated her. Presently he turned, bade his friend good-by and moved away again, coming directly down the vista toward Lily. He walked with