Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/347

 gola, was gazing speculatively at the balcony, then wistfully at the windows which he knew were hers, when there was wafted into his nostrils a faint but delicious perfume, a distinctive, delicate, bewitching fragrance that was as much personality as it was the distilled scent of flowers. He inhaled it and stood enraptured. It was Billie! She was near—she was somewhere round him in the night. The faint breeze breathed of her. His heart leaped; his nerves tingled; he could barely repress a cry of delight. Billie! Suddenly he shrank. She was there—just on the other side of the tamarack pillar. She was passing—screened from him only by the rose vines; he made out her figure clearly in that lurid half light. He could have reached out and touched her; but—caution! He must not alarm her. And, gods of ill luck, there tagged her maid after her. Her heels clicked faintly on the vitrified bricks; his were noiseless on the cushion of the lawn, and he followed after her.

Billie trailed listlessly to the very end of the pergola and sat down upon a bench of split logs where he had dreamed with her a score of times. The maid came on and sat down upon the same bench, but at a little distance, on the end nearer the house; the end that was between him and her. He had to keep behind the two of them.

"If—if she were only alone," he sighed, twisting his hands nervously, and speculating whether the maid could be trusted.

"You may go, Nana," Billie announced unexpectedly, and while her voice thrilled him, it melted him by its inarticulate sadness.

The maid, after solicitously turning up the collar of