The supper party that night at the Folies Bergeres was unexpectedly gay, although, in one respect, the arrangements made by Itash miscarried. Mademoiselle Yvonne had found a friend, a Belgian young lady, who had attained some celebrity in the music halls as Mathilde Leroy, and some notoriety in the Press, owing to the number of her admirers and the eccentricity of her toilettes. Itash, who preferred to retain his own dancing companion, invited Mademoiselle Mathilde to make a partie carree. But though Cornelius Blunn was graciousness itself and the hilarity of the little party was chiefly due to his efforts, he evinced a partiality for Mademoiselle Yvonne which was somewhat disconcerting for her escort, and most disappointing for Mademoiselle Mathilde.
“You will make him jealous, my poor Itash,” Yvonne declared, laughing, as, for the third time following, she suffered Blunn to lead her amongst the dancers. “He likes so to dance with me, the poor boy. Mathilde wearies him, for she talks of nothing but her jewels, and her gowns, and her need for money.”
“And what do you talk to him about?” Blunn asked.
She sighed a little.
“Of what is there one can speak,” she complained, “with such as Itash? Oh, he is a good boy. He never flirts with the other girls, and he gives what he can. But women to him are just things without a soul. Often I wish that I had a friend who lived in the great world and who would speak to me of the things he did, of his triumphs, even of his troubles. That would make life more interesting. Some one, for example, like Monsieur.”
“Does Itash never speak to you of serious things?” he persisted.
“Never, one word,” she answered fervently,
“Do you think that he ever spoke to Cleo of such?”
“But why?” she demanded. “I have as much intelligence as Cleo, and he preferred me. It was unfortunate for Cleo, but it came about so. It is not all happiness, Monsieur Blunn,” she whispered, “to have for a friend a young man often so morose and gloomy. Because I dance with you and he sees that I am happy, he will scarcely speak to me for days. He will not stay away. Oh, no. I shall have no liberty. When he has finished his work he will come, and lie still and smoke, and watch me. I must be there for him to look at, to dance for him, if he wishes it, but of conversation, of companionship, of the good time together,—nothing.”
“Yet you came with him, here.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“He is constant,” she admitted. “In his way he is generous. What would you have? He deserted another and came to me. When another comes whom I prefer I shall desert him. It is the life.”
He leaned and whispered something in her ear. She laughed back at him softly.
“A man like you,” she murmured. “That would be paradise for any girl. See, let us sit and talk. Itash is dancing with Mathilde, after all. He swore that he would not again. But there they go. We will sit down. I will have some more champagne. We will talk, yes.”
They left the dancers and sat down at their table. Blunn gave an order to the waiter who filled their glasses and departed for more wine.
“He dances well, at any rate,” Blunn remarked, watching Itash and Mathilde. Yvonne was looking into her gold mirror, with a little powder puff poised between her fingers.
“He dances well, but like a monkey,” she declared, without looking away. “He is what I call a gymnast. He does not make you feel the joy of it.”
She suddenly pushed her vanity case on one side. She leaned across towards him; all the coquetry of her nature shone out of her eyes, lured him from her curving lips.
“Ah, Monsieur,” she said, “you make me speak unkindly but I think that you make me love you. Shall I? Would you have me love you?”
“Mademoiselle, it would only be fair,” he replied. “For you I adore.”
“It is true?” she whispered, leaning a little closer. “You assure me that it is true?”
He smiled at her. Then he patted her hand.
“It is true, Mademoiselle Yvonne,” he assured her, “yet listen to me. I shall not treat you as my young friend Count Itash does. I shall speak to you as a woman of understanding, of sympathy, of sweetness.”
“Proceed, Monsieur,” she begged. “You intrigue me very much.”
“The memory of you will remain with me,” he went on, “until the time comes when I may remind you of to-night, and we may, perhaps, look for happiness. But I am a man who is living through these days with one thought. I have a purpose from the accomplishment of which I never swerve. When that is finished, then my feet press the earth again. It is then I seek Yvonne.”
“You seemed like that,” she murmured. “All the time I knew that you played with words, I am disappointed. You make me unhappy, Monsieur.”
“On the contrary,” he declared, “I am going to make you happy. I have a little surprise for you—if you will do me the honour of accepting it—a little present.”
“Monsieur!” she exclaimed.
She shook with eagerness. A present! The most appealing word in the language to one of her order.
“I am faced with a problem,” he explained, “which I think that you can solve. If you can I shall beg your acceptance of this trifle. If you cannot—well, I shall ask you to accept it all the same.”
She looked at the morocco case which he held in the hollow of his hand, saw the lid fly open, and gave a gasp of delight. She was a good judge of jewellery, and diamonds set in platinum appealed to her.
“But it is magnificent!” she cried.
Blunn replaced the case in his pocket. A touch of his foot spelt out a warning.
“This is not for Itash,” he murmured. “Later on.”
Itash, morose, but intensely polite, returned. Mademoiselle Mathilde certainly did her best to further his wishes. Besides, she very much preferred Cornelius Blunn.
“You are not fair,” she whispered to him. “All the time you talk and dance with Yvonne, and poor Count Itash—he bores himself with me, shaking with jealousy. I am disheartened.”
Blunn poured out the wine.
“Mademoiselle,” he invited, “you will dance with me, perhaps, next time. You must remember that Yvonne is an older friend, and when one nears fifty one does not offer oneself so readily as a partner to acquaintances. One lacks the courage.”
“But you dance wonderfully,” she assured him. “Come, the music is beginning. I have been impatient for an hour to get you to myself. The time has come.”
They danced, talked nonsense, and danced again. Mathilde would have been more than content to have spent the whole of the evening with her partner. Itash, too, would very much have preferred it. And yet, by some means or another, the master-mind of the four had his own way. Without the slightest apparent effort things came to pass as he desired. Professedly a little weary, he found himself sitting with Yvonne. Mathilde and Itash, with the precision of dancing dolls, were performing a tango.
“This is my question, Yvonne,” Cornelius Blunn said simply, as he drew the case from his pocket. “By some means or other Itash, who I believe is an honourable man, has betrayed to Mademoiselle Cleo, the young lady whom you supplanted, a secret of great importance. I do not believe that he wilfully communicated it to her. I do not believe that he has ever committed a word to writing. Yet she knows. Now, can you, dear little friend, give me any idea how this has come to pass?”
For a moment Yvonne looked utterly blank. She seemed genuinely perplexed. She began to shake her head. And then a sudden light flashed across her face. She threw herself back in her chair and laughed for a moment heartily. She laid her hand on Mr. Blunn’s shoulder. She drew his head down to hers.
“Mon Dieu!” she whispered. “It is easy. I have heard strange things myself, to which I have paid no attention. He talks in his sleep—talks—talks—ah, how he talks—sometimes all through the night!”
The little case was in her fingers. She dropped it into her bag. Cornelius Blunn sat by her side, grim and silent, a veritable Nebuchadnezzar, brooding over the terrible writing. Thirty years of his own toil, thirty years of a nation’s agony, a stealthy creeping forward through the ages, the brains of two greedy empires concentrated upon one end, building and toiling and planning,—these things were all imperilled, because a dancing girl had known jealousy!