Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/181

 Billie over the telephone the news of his presence and the hint of its glad meaning.

"Henry!" she exclaimed, startled, but her fluted tones vibrating immediately to the joy in his. "Oh, hurry . . . hurry!" she urged, as divining. "I shall be waiting . . . among the roses."

Among the roses! Most—most auspicious. That was Henry's favorite trysting place, his favorite place for saying: "I love you and I love you."

Henry found Billie looking like some wonderful rose herself. She sat upon a marble bench on the raised floor of a colonnade, roofed only by vying crimson ramblers. Vines crept about the column against which she leaned and seemed to twine about her figure as she sat, bowered in green, the dark masses of her hair backgrounding a face all pink and white but for the violet blue of the eyes—bluer under this turquoise sky than they had ever seemed before.

Harrington had run lightly the length of the sward in front of the colonnade before he came upon her. Her eyes were on a humming bird hovering amid the blossoms over her, and he halted unseen for one delicious moment to drink in the picture. In her lap lay one of those huge garden hats of which she was so fond and which she wore so gracefully. It was inverted and heaped high with roses. Chaste in her beauty as the flowers, but not cold—warm as the red blood of life itself, she was waiting—waiting for her lover! So he found her.

And it was his hour. Henry Harrington knew it as he knew the sun was in the heavens, as he knew that she was there. She was there for him to take.

"Billie?" he cried softly.