The Streets of Ascalon Part 6

The golden dancer, who evidently had been gazing down on the carnival scene below from behind the lattice, whirled around to confront him in a little flurry of cigarette smoke.

For a moment they faced each other, then:

"How did you know where to find me, Harlequin?"

"I'd have died if I hadn't found you, fairest, loveliest----"

"That is no answer! Answer me!"

"Why did you flee?" he asked. "Answer that, first."

She glanced at her cigarette and shrugged her shoulders:

"You see why I fled, don't you? Now answer me."

The Harlequin presented the hilt of his sword which was set with a tiny mirror.

"You see why I fled after you," he said, "don't you?"

"All the same," she insisted, smilingly, "I have been informed on excellent authority that I am the only one, except the family, who knows of this balcony. And here comes a Harlequin blundering in! _You_ are not Mr. Wycherly; and you're certainly not Molly."

"Alas! My ultimate ends are not as shapely."

"Then who are you?" She added, laughing: "They're shapely enough, too."

"I am only a poor wandering, love-smitten Harlequin--" he said, "scorned, despised, and mocked by beauty----"

"Love-smitten?" she repeated.

"Can you doubt it, now?"

She laughed gaily and leaned back against the balcony's velvet rail:

"You lose no time in declaring yourself, do you, Harlequin?--that is, if you are hinting that _I_ have smitten you with the pretty pa.s.sion."

"Through and through, beautiful dancer----"

"How do you know that I am beautiful under this mask?"

"I know many things. That's my compensation for being only a poor mountebank of a Harlequin--magic penetration--the clairvoyance of radium."

"Did you expect to find _me_ at the top of those cork-screw stairs?"

"I did."

"Why?"

"Inference. Every toad hides a jewel in its head. So I argued that somewhere in the ugliness of darkest Philistia a gem must be hidden; and I've searched for years--up and down throughout the haunts of men from Gath to Ascalon. And--behold! My quest is ended at your pretty feet!--Rose-Diamond of the World!"

He sank lithely on one knee; she laughed deliciously, looking down at his masked face.

"Who are you, Harlequin?--whose wits and legs seem to be equally supple and symmetrical?"

"Tell it not in Gath; Publish it not in the streets of Ascalon; I am that man for whom you were destined before either you or I were born.

Are you frightened?"

The Byzantine dancer laughed and shook her head till all the golden metal on her was set chiming.

He said, still on one knee at her feet:

"Exquisite phantom of an Empire dead, from what emblazoned sarcophagus have you danced forth across our modern oceans to bewitch the Philistia of to-day? Who clothed you in scarlet delicately? Who put ornaments of gold upon your apparel----"

"You court me with Scripture as smoothly as Heaven's great Enemy," she said--"and to your own ends, as does he. Are you leagued with him, O agile and intrusive Harlequin, to steal away my peace of mind?"

Lithely, silently he leaped up to the bal.u.s.trade and, gathering his ankles under him, squatted there, cross-legged, peering sideways at her through the slanting eye-holes.

"If that screen behind you gives way," she warned him, "you will have accomplished your last harlequinade."

He glanced coolly over his shoulder:

"How far is it to the floor below, do you suppose?"

"Far enough to make a good harlequin out of a live one," she said....

"Please be careful; I really mean it."

"Child," he said solemnly, "do you suppose that I mind falling a hundred feet or so on my head? I've already fallen infinitely farther than that this evening."

"And it didn't kill you?" she exclaimed, clasping her hands, dramatically.

"No. Because our destiny must first be accomplished before I die."

"Ours?"

"Yours and mine, pretty dancer! I've already fulfilled _my_ destiny by falling in love with you at first sight. That was a long fall, wasn't it?"

"Very. Am I to fulfil mine in a similar manner?"

"You are."

"Will it--kill me, do you think?"

"I don't think so. Try it."

"Will it hurt?--this terrible fall? And how far must I descend to fall in love with you?"

"Sometimes falling in love does hurt," he said gravely, "when the fall is a long one."

"Is this to be a long one?"