Page:The Relentless City.djvu/96

86 clothes. Her hat was naturally black, and streams of dye poured down her face and neck. Her dress was black, too, and as wet as her hat. But then the indescribable frolic of the thing—there is no other word for it—seized him, and just as Amelie, looking like a nymph of Grecian waterways, hurried past him, radiant, slim-limbed, an embodiment of joy, and beckoned to him, he delayed no longer, but joined the rest. But, he said to himself, as he took off his socks.

For an hour or more the pearl-hunting went on, and every oyster had been fished up and the whole lagoon churned into mud long before the Prince could be persuaded to leave it. Twice he made a false start, and came out of the water, only to seize his net again and hurry back on the chance of finding another, his pockets bulging with the shells he had not yet opened. All the time the telegraph was whirring and clicking the news of the huge success of Mrs. Palmer's first afternoon of Revels and the ecstasies of the Prince all over the country; and Mrs. John Z. Adelboden, like Marius, sat and wept among the ruins of Newport.

Bilton and Mrs. Emsworth had driven down together in a motor from New York, but the latter had to get back in time to act that evening, to return late on Saturday night, stop over Sunday, and act at Mon Repos on Sunday evening. Bilton, on the other hand, had taken a rare holiday, and was not returning to town till the next week. Constitutionally, he disliked a holiday; this one, however, he had less objection to, since there was a definite aim he wished to accomplish during it. He was a man to be described as a person of appetites rather than of emotions, and his appetites partook of the nature of the rest of him. They were keen, definite, and orderly—not clamorous or brutal in the least degree, but hard and clear-cut. He was supposed not many years ago to have proposed by telegram to the lady who subsequently became Mrs. John Z. Adelboden, who