A Woman's Will Part 34

PART II

THE BEATING OF THE WAVES

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Chapter Ten

It was September in Munich. They stood together on the Maximilianbrucke, and, looking down into the gray and black turbulence of the Isar, felt themselves to be by contrast most tranquil and even-tempered. The little river rushed beneath them, forming a wealth of tiny whirlpools above its stone-paved way, its waters seeming to clash and struggle in a species of mimic, liquid warfare, and then, of a sudden, victor and vanquished fled wildly on together, giving place to other waves with their other personal scores to settle.

The banks on either side were beginning to show some touches of autumnal scarlet among those ma.s.ses of vine whose ends trailed in the water below, and among the shrubs of the Promenade the same blood stain betrayed the summer's death at the hands of the merciless frost king.

The Peace Monument was there, piercing heaven with its golden wings; the Lucaskirche towered to the east; above them all sat the lofty Maximilianeum, that open-work crown of Munich, whose perfectly curved approach and double arcaded wings must joy the soul of every artist-nature that lingers near it.

"How old are you?" the man said suddenly.

Rosina jerked her consciousness up out of the bed of the Isar.

"No gentleman at home would ask a lady that," she told him, thus showing great presence of mind.

He smiled and twisted his moustache.

"But I am not a gentleman at home," he said pleasantly, "I am a gentleman travelling."

"How old are you?"

"I have thirty-three years."

"Well, I haven't," she said with decision; "you might think that I was forty, but that is only because I have had so much experience."

He looked at her in a dubious, troubled way.

"I did not think that you had forty: I did not get that just perhaps.

You have not truthfully forty, have you?"

Rosina laughed in unfeigned amus.e.m.e.nt.

"No, monsieur, I am not thirty even. I told you that if I seemed to be forty, it was because I had had so much experience."

"So much experience?"

"Yes."

"You feel that you have had experience?"

"I know it."

"Experience as, _par exemple_, me?"

"Yes."

He looked at her and smiled, shaking his head.

"Oh, madame, you say that, not at all knowing how much experience I have had."

She raised her eyebrows slightly and turned to walk on. He followed at her shoulder, and when they came to the little stone stair that leads down to the Promenade, he halted and glanced expressively off among the paths and shade.

"There isn't time," she said, shaking _her_ head now.

He went down two steps alone, and then held out his hand with that irresistible smile; she hesitated, looked helplessly around, and then, like all women who hesitate, was forthwith lost, swallowed up, in the maze of those wandering paths. Von Ibn secured his cane well beneath his arm and lit a cigarette.

"Do I ever now ask you 'may I'?" he said.

"You never did ask me 'might you?'" she replied.

He drew two or three satisfied puffs.

"It is good to be so friends," he commented placidly, and then he took his cane into his right hand again and swung it with the peculiarly vigorous swing which in his case always betrayed the possession of an uncommon degree of _bonne humeur_. "And now for your experience?" he asked after a little. "It is that which I will to hear."

"Did you ever go to a masked ball?"

"_Mais, naturellement._"

"Well, so did I." She paused to note the effect.

He threw a quick glance of undefined question at her.

"Masked?" he demanded.

"Oh, dear no! thickly veiled, and 'way upstairs in a gallery."

"Were you greatly amused 'way upstairs in your gallery?"

"Yes, really; there were ever so many men there that I knew."

"Did they come upstairs in the gallery?"

"No indeed, no one knew that I was there. But it interested me to see whom _I_ knew--"

"Was I there?" he interrupted.

"Oh, it wasn't here! it was ever so long ago, while my husband was alive."

"Did you see your husband?"

"Yes," she said flus.h.i.+ng, "and he was just like all the other men. He wore no mask, and he did not care one bit who might recognize him."

"You had been better not gone," said the man decidedly.