Chambers Robert William
The Laughing Girl

"What would that do to us, Raoul?"

"Cut us off from the rest of the world," he said simply.

"For how long?"

"Days, weeks – longer perhaps. Who knows what might happen if a big snow broke loose from the Bec de l'Empereur?"

"Anyway," said I, "we have sufficient provisions."

"Plenty, Monsieur."

"Then it would mean only a rather dull and exasperating imprisonment."

He looked at me with an odd smile: "It might mean the salvation of the world – or its damnation," he said.

I was silent but curious. He smiled again and shrugged. "For me," he said, "I pray that no avalanche falls to block this valley within the week." He looked upward into the heavily falling rain, standing there bare-headed.

"I ask," he said in a low, serious voice, "that God should be graciously pleased to hold His hand for one week longer before He lets loose His eternal snows upon this valley."

When I returned to the breakfast-room royalty was feeding. All acknowledged my greeting with civility, even Tino who, however, also turned red and nervously pasted his roll with marmalade.

"For diversion," inquired the Queen, "what does one do here?"

I enumerated the out-door sports. Nobody cared to fish except with a net. Tino expressed himself vaguely as in favor of a chamois hunt when he felt up to it. The Queen wished to climb the Bec de l'Empereur, but when I told her there were no guides nearer than Berne and also that this rain made the mountains very dangerous, she decided to postpone the ascent.

As for the Tzar of all the Bulgars he paid strict attention to his plate and betrayed no inclination for anything more strenuous than the facial exercise of chewing.

While the Queen was there neither King ventured to annoy Clelia, but after her majesty had left the table they both evinced symptoms of pinching, furtive leers and smirks.

However, there was a stoniness about my expression which served to discourage them. Ferdinand scrubbed his beard in his finger-bowl with a wallowing sound, dried it noisily on his napkin, rose, bowed to me, and waddled back upstairs.

Tino seemed very uncomfortable to find himself alone with me. But I conversed with him as good humoredly as though I had never told him what I should do to him in the event of his misbehavior under my roof. And we got on well enough.

He had mean eyes, however, and a fussy, jerky, nervous manner, yet furtive for all that. An odd monarch with the most false face, except for Ferdinand's, that I had ever beheld, though at first encounter one might easily be deceived and take him for what he pretended to be – a bluff, noisy, unceremonious, and somewhat coarse soldier with his tête-de-militaire and his allure and vocabulary of the Caserne.

"We've some friends arriving to-day," he said. "Did my wife tell you?"

"Somebody mentioned it yesterday, I believe."

"Well, they'll be here to-day, so fix them up snugly, O'Ryan."

"The rain may prevent them from starting," I suggested.

"Rain or no rain they'll be here," he repeated, lighting a strong cigarette.

He went away presently upstairs. And I did not doubt they would all have their noses together in a few moments discussing whatever crisis had brought them to this lonely little valley without escort or servants and carefully camouflaged.

I went into the living-room where Smith sat reading.

"What the devil," said I, "has brought these Kings here, Smith? Can you guess?"

"I don't know. I might," he replied, looking over his book at me.

"Well, what is your guess?"

"Why, I suppose they're worried. Things are going very rottenly for the hun. British, French and Yank are kicking them about most brutally from Arras to the Vosges. That pasty-faced pervert, the Crown Prince, has had the very pants kicked off him. The U-boats are a fizzle. The Bolsheviki are running into cracks like vermin to escape fumigation. Austria is sick from Italy's kick delivered into the pit of her stomach. Enver Pasha, who was promised the Khediviate of Egypt when the boche started to carve up the world, is turning ugly and demanding why the banquet isn't ready."

He made a weary gesture toward the ceiling.

"Up there," he said, "sits the most cowardly, murderous, and despicable ruler in the world – Ferdinand of Bulgaria – scared stiff because he's beginning to believe he's bet on the wrong horse.

"With him sit a King and Queen recently kicked headlong out of Greece. They also are becoming intensely nervous about that promise made by the hun Kaiser – an oath thundered from Berlin that the boche sword should restore them to their thrones.

"You see, Michael, they're worried. They've sneaked away from Berne incognito to meet here and lay all their cards on the common table. They're here to consult, bargain, cheat if they can, but anyway they're here to come to some understanding and arrive at some agreement as to the best means to avert utter disaster. That's why they're here.

"They couldn't feel safe in spy-ridden Berne; they evidently dare not trust their own servants. It is plain to me that Switzerland, which is mostly pro-boche, engineered the affair, willingly or reluctantly, because the Kaiser's sister is involved and the Federal Government is horribly afraid of the boche.

"You see how it came about, don't you? This bunch of royal crooks desired a safe place for a get-together party. Long ago they had planned it. Then you appeared to take possession of your inheritance.

"What could be safer for them than this lonely valley and a neutral gentleman from Chili to make 'em comfortable?"

"And a Norse Viking," said I.

"Be careful," he said gravely.

"Of course. But they believe you are what you pretend to be, don't they?"

"Absolutely… And how do you know I am not?" he inquired smilingly.

We exchanged gay but significant glances. He went on speaking:

"That's all there is to it," he said, "a bunch of dips trying it on each other and still held together by the 'cohesive power of plunder' – the Prussian hun, the Austrian hun, the unspeakable Turk, the bloody Bulgar, the besotted Bolshevik! – a fine mess, Michael! – and here, under your roof, are three who have long ago been mugged, and who are known to the police of civilization everywhere."

"They've got their nerve," said I angrily, "to come here and discuss their dirty schemes! I've a damned good mind to ask them for their rooms. I've got enough of them already, Smith. I'm hanged if I stand for this another day – "

His hand closed on my arm in a leisurely grip of steel, and I winced and looked up at him in surprise and protest.

"Don't – spoil – things," he said quietly. His level glance met mine with a metallic glint, and I saw in his features something terrible – a fleeting gleam like the far reflection of lightning across a thunder cloud.

"Smith!" I exclaimed.

"Don't raise your voice, old chap."

"N-no. But – can't you tell me just what you really are?"

"I'm really quite all right," he assured me, laughingly.

"I assumed that. But – are you here, also, to keep an eye on these kings?"

"Well, you know one can't help noticing them – "

"Damn! Answer me."

"I admit," he said, "that they interest me."

So that was what brought Smith here, too! He must have known they were coming. He must have deliberately scraped acquaintance with me for this purpose.

"I thought," said I bitterly, "that you really liked me, Smith."

"I do, confound you!" he said. "If I didn't both like and trust you, do you think I'd have been so careless in concealing my identity?"

Both Thusis and Clelia had said the same thing to me.

"Smith?"

"What?"

"Did you know Thusis and Clelia before you met them here?"

"No."

"Do you know why they're here?"

"I can guess."

"Do you know who they really are?"

"No," he said honestly, "I don't. And I can not seem to find out. All I know is that their purpose in coming here does conflict with mine – "

The pretty fanfare of a postilion's horn cut him short.

"There," said I, "comes the rest of the precious bunch!"

"'Hail, hail,'" said he gravely, "'the gang's all here!'"

And we got up and went to the window to inspect the arriving diligence.

XIII
IN THE RAIN

That afternoon I fled the house. This new invasion of my privacy had quite upset me. Bulgarian and Greek royalty had been difficult enough to endure, but this new wagon-load of huns and near-huns proved too much for me.

If there were any privacy at all to be had it seemed that I must seek it in the woods. And thither I fled under an umbrella, a book under one arm, a fishing rod under the other, and my pockets full of smoking material.

For I preferred to sit on the wet moss in the rain, and read and smoke and fish under my ancient green gamp – even if the seat of my trousers did become soaking wet – rather than listen to the gobbling gabble of those Teutons and witness their bad manners and their unpleasant personal habits.

So, as I say, as soon as the new arrivals had registered and had been assigned to rooms I made up my mind to inhabit the woods during their occupation of my property, and invited Smith to share my indignant seclusion.

He declined, probably because, whoever he really was and whatever might be his job, the one and the other very evidently had to do with this bunch of assorted boches.

He said very politely that he didn't enjoy privacy when it was sopping wet. He smiled when he said it. We were standing at the desk in the big living-room: the huns, both royalty and new arrivals, had gone to their rooms, and Smith was carelessly examining the register where my guests' signatures had been inscribed in the pale and watery ink of the country.

"A pretty kettle of fish," I commented, looking over his shoulder. "But this new consignment of boches doesn't seem to be camouflaged. These are their real names, I fancy."

"I happen to know that they are," said Smith.

He began to read the names aloud just as they were written; and I noticed the lazy amusement in his pleasant, even voice as he commented upon each signature:

"'General Count von Dungheim'! Oh, yes; he belonged to Tino's suite when he was kicked out of Athens. They call him 'Droly.' He did some dirty work there – instigated the murder of the allied detachments. He's a big, thin Prussian with a capacity for gluttony equal only to the Bulgarian King's. He enjoys only one eye.

"'Baron von Bummelzug'! Oh, certainly. He's a Bavarian civilian. He engineered the treacherous surrender of that Greek army corps. He also was in Tino's suite, and still is.

"'Admiral Lauterlaus'! Tino's ex-naval aide. Tried dirty work on the Allied fleet off Samos. A Prussian, – mostly belly and head.

"'Princess Pudelstoff'! She was that enormously fat woman, Michael, who kissed King Ferdinand on both cheeks and left two wet spots. She's one of those German-Russians from Courland attached to the Bulgarian court, and related to Ferdinand in some degree or other, – irregularly.

"'Countess Manntrapp'! The pretty girl. You remember her honeyed, cooing voice when you were presented to her? – and her ecstatic baby stare, as though acquaintance with a Chilean gentleman had been the secret ambition of her life, and the realization overwhelmed her? Well, old top, there you have Lila Shezawitch, Countess Manntrapp – the widow of that brainless old reprobate, the cavalryman, who disappeared in some Russian swamp-hole when Hindenburg made his mark among the lakes.

"'Adolf Gizzler'! Look out for that rat, Michael. He's a bum school-teacher, Bummelzug's secretary.

"'Leo Puppsky'! What do you know about that Bolshevik being here in Switzerland? And

"'Isidore Wildkatz,' too! Here they are with the huns, this pair of Judases! Oh, you're quite right, Michael. It's a pretty kettle of fish. I don't blame you for taking to the woods, rain or no rain."

"You won't come, too?" I asked. He smiled, and I understood.

He was such a decent sort. I had become very fond of him.

"All right," said I; "don't get yourself into trouble. That's certainly a sinister bunch of boches as well as an unpleasant one."

"Good old Michael," he said, patting my shoulder.

So I took to the woods with rod and book, and a camp-stool I picked up on the veranda.

Heavens, how it rained! But I stopped at the barn-yard, found a manure-fork, and disinterred a tin canful of angle-worms. Then I marched on in the teeth of the storm, umbrella over my head, and entered that pretty woodland path which Thusis and I had once trodden together on our food-conservation quest.

The memory inclined me to sentimental reverie, and, with my dripping gamp over my head, I slopped along in a sort of trance, my brain a maze of vague enchantment as images of Thusis or of my photograph of The Laughing Girl alternately occupied my thoughts.

For, when alone, these two lovely phantoms always became inextricably mixed. I could not seem to differentiate between them in memory. And which was the loveliest I could not decide because the resemblance was too confusing.

And so, in a sort of delicious daze, I arrived at the foot-bridge.

Here I spread my camp-stool by the green pool's edge. It was a torrent, now, but still as brilliant and clear as a beryl, and that it lacked its natural and emerald clarity did not deter me from baiting my hook with several expostulating worms, and hurling it forth into the foaming basin.

To hold a fishing rod in one fixed position bores me, and always did. So I laid the rod on the bank, placed a flat stone on the butt, and, sheltered under my umbrella, lighted a pipe and opened my book.

But the book soon bored me, too. It was a novel by one of the myriads of half-educated American "authors" who resemble a countryman I once knew who called himself a "natural bone-setter" and enjoyed a large and furtive practice among neighboring clodhoppers to the indignation of all the local physicians.

There are thousands of "authors" in the United States. But there are very few writers.

And this novel was by an author, and my attention wandered.

Through an opening in the forest on a clear day one might look out upon a world of mountains eastward. I realized there could be no view through the thickly falling rain, but I turned around. And, to my surprise, I beheld a cloaked figure poised upon the chasm's distant edge, peering out into the storm through a pair of field-glasses.

I knew that figure in spite of the cloak. Nor could the thickly slanting rain quench the glorious color of that burnished hair.

"Thusis!" I shouted.

Slowly the figure turned, glasses still poised; and I saw her looking in my direction.

"I'm fishing!" I called out joyously. "Come under my umbrella!"

She cast a glance behind her toward the blank void where, on clear days, the bulk of the Bec de l'Empereur towered aloft in its mantle of dazzling snow. Then she slowly walked toward me through the rain.

When she came near to where I sat, she began to laugh; and I never saw such an exquisite sight as Thusis, bare-headed in the rain, laughing.

"What on earth are you up to, Michael?" she said.

"Fishing. That herd of huns will eat us out of house and garden if we don't catch something. Sit beside me under the umbrella, Thusis. There's room if we're careful and don't let the camp-stool collapse."

She gave me an inscrutable glance, stood motionless for a few moments, then slowly came over.

"Careful now," I cautioned her, rising. "We must both seat ourselves at the same instant or this camp-stool will close up like a jack-knife. Are you ready?"

She laughed and inclined her pretty head.

"Then – one! two! three! Sit!"

We managed to accomplish it without an accident.

"We're too close together," she protested.

"Don't stir," said I. "Do you feel how it wabbles?"

She tested the camp-stool cautiously, and nodded.

"What an absurd situation," she remarked, glancing up at the gamp which I held over us.

"I think it's very jolly." She didn't look at me; we were too close – so close that we might possibly have rubbed noses if either turned. But in her side-long glance I noted both amusement and irony.

"Have you caught anything, Don Michael?"

"Not a bally thing."

"What are you reading?"

"A book of sorts – a novel by an 'author' who lacks education, cultivation, experience, vocabulary, and a working knowledge of English grammar. In other words, Thusis, a typical American 'author,' – one of the Bolsheviki of literature whose unlettered Bolshevik readers are recruited from the same audience that understands and roars with laughter at the German and Jewish jokes which compose the librettos of our New York musical comedies."

Thusis turned up her pretty nose and shrugged – or tried to, – but nearly upset me, and desisted.

"It's silly to sit here like two hens on a roost," she said.

"It's cozy," said I with a blissful smile that perhaps approached the idiotic.

"Cozy or not," she insisted, "we resemble a pair of absurd birds."

"Then," said I, "one of us ought to twitter and begin to sing."

We both laughed. "The last time we were here together," I reminded her, "you were singing all the while."

"Was I?"

"Yes, and I liked it – although your detachment was not flattering to me."

"Poor Michael. Did you feel abused?"

"It's no novel feeling," said I.

"You ungrateful young man! Do you mean to insinuate that I abuse you? I – who go fishing with you, stop my house-work to gossip with you, sit on the stairs with you at three in the morning – and in my nightie, too – "

"What an incident for a best-seller!" said I. "Fancy the fury of the female critic! Imagine the rage of the 'good woman'!"

"You are satirical, Don Michael."

"Doesn't satire amuse you?"

"I adore it."

"Nothing," said I, "so angers ignorance as satire, because it is not understood, and ignorance becomes suspicious when it does not understand anything. Ignorance mistakes dullness for depth. That is why dull books are so widely read.

"There is, in America, Thusis, a vast desert inhabited by 'authors' who produce illiterature.

"Similar deserts, though less in area, exist in other sections of America. By its ear-marks, however, I guess that this book was 'authorized' somewhere west of Chicago. Don't read it. Only 'a good woman' could enjoy it."

Thusis laughed. "Don't you admire good women and critics?"

"The American critic," said I, "is usually female but not necessarily feminine in sex. It is what is reverently known as 'a good woman' – and like a truffle-hound its nose for immorality is so keen that it can discover a bad smell where there isn't any."

Thusis threw back her head and yielded to laughter unrestrained.

"So you think there was nothing immoral in sitting on the stairs with you in my nightie?"

"Was there?"

"Of course not. Clean minds are independent of clothes. As for clothing, I often wish these were Greek times and I were rid of all my duds except sandals and a scarf."

"It's all very well for you to wish that, Thusis, but consider the spectacle of the Princess Pudelstoff, for example, in Olympian attire – "

And Thusis went off into a gale of laughter, endangering our mutual stability on the camp-stool. Which scared her, – an unpremeditated bath in the pool having been narrowly averted – and she said again that it was silly of us to sit there like a pair of imbecile dicky-birds.

"Then tune up, Thusis. You seem to know a lot of songs. I liked that odd, weird, sweet little song you kept singing about Naxos and Tenedos."

"I didn't suppose you noticed it, Michael."

"I notice everything concerning you."

Looking at her sideways I saw the charming color deepen in her cheeks.

"Is that paying court to you or making love to you?" I added.

"I don't know. Somehow, when you pay court to me, you make it sound like – the other thing."

"But I am in love – "

"Wait," she said hastily. "I'll sing another funny song – the same sort of song you found so amusing – about Naxos and Tenedos. It is called 'Invocations.'"

As a little bird looks up to heaven after every sip of water, so Thusis looked up after inspiration had sufficiently saturated her. She lifted her pretty voice as clearly and sweetly as a linnet sings in the falling rain:

 
"Wine poured out to Aphrodite,
On thy sacred sands,
In libations to the mighty
Blue-eyed goddess Aphrodite
Perfumes all thy strands,
Scents the meadows and thy woodlands,
Tenedos, my Tenedos!
Every maiden understands
Why each flowering orchard close
Swims with fragrance of the rose.
 
 
Votive wine that long ago
Set thy sacred soil aglow
Sweetens still each Grecian nose
In Tenedos, my Tenedos!
 

II

 
God-like Bacchus with his flighty
Band of laughing jades,
Drank and sang and every night he
Got so classically tight he
Sought thy sylvan glades.
Snoring where he gaily reveled,
Tenedos, my Tenedos!
Mid his pretty nymphs disheveled
Sleeping off the over-dose,
Waking late to vinous woes!
 
 
Votive wine that long ago
Set thy sacred groves aglow,
Still exhilarates each nose
In Tenedos, my Tenedos!"
 

"Oh, the cunning little song!" I exclaimed enchanted. "But what is Tenedos, anyway? It's an island, isn't it?"

"It is," said Thusis solemnly.

"Certainly. I remember. And so is Naxos – Greek islands in the Ægean."

"I shall mark you perfect," said Thusis gravely. And she wrote "perfect" in the air with one slim forefinger.

"Why," said I curiously, "do you sing songs about Naxos and Tenedos?"

"Perhaps because I have lived in Naxos and Tenedos."

"I see."

"No, you don't," said Thusis, smiling.

We sat for a while in silence watching the foaming current swerving my line. But no fish moved it.

"They must be pretty – those Greek islands," said I vaguely.

"Do you know their history?"

"No."

"Would you like to hear it?"

"Whatever you say I like to hear," I replied, beginning to ooze sentiment as well as rain.

"You annoy me," said Thusis. "Listen sensibly, if you wish me to tell you about those islands."

Snubbed, I sat silent with an injured expression that afforded her lively satisfaction, judging from her vivacious voice and manner:

"You are to know, Michael," she began, "that Naxos is one of the Cyclades, and from the day of the old gods it has been famous for its wine.

"In the thirteenth century it was conquered by Venice. It was made into a duchy. So was Tenedos.

"But these two Venetian Duchies were conquered and annexed by the unspeakable Turk in the sixteenth century. Then Greece recovered Naxos."

She looked down pensively at her folded hands. Presently they became interlocked and I saw the fingers twisting nervously.

"There are," she said, "some people – descendants of the old Venetians in Naxos, who believe that the island ought to belong to Italy … and that the duchy ought to be revived and reconstituted."

"Are you one of these people, Thusis?"

"Yes. I am descended from those Venetians. I was born in Naxos."

She remained absorbed in her own reflections for a few moments, then:

"Tenedos, also, ought to become a duchy again. The Turk rules it. He calls it Bogdsha-Adassi. But it was allied with Greece before Christ lived. It should be either Grecian or Italian… And Clelia and I believe that it rightly belongs to Italy."

"How big an island is it?"

"About seven miles long."

We both laughed.

"Are seven miles worth fighting for?" I asked, amused.

"One's back-yard is worth fighting for, isn't it?" she asked calmly.

"Of course. But not for the purpose of establishing a duchy in it."

Thusis didn't seem to consider that remark very funny.

"I'll freely give anything I have," she said hotly, "but I'll fight like a wild-cat to resist the robbery of a single button!"

"I didn't steal that button," said I. "I brought it back to you – from Ferdie's dressing-room."

"I wish you wouldn't be so flippant, Michael!"

"Am I?"

"Very."

She really seemed vexed and I asked her pardon.

"But you oughtn't to mention theft to a thief," I added. "I'm trying to steal your heart, you know – "

"Michael, you are insufferable!" she exclaimed with a movement of impatience that almost sent us into the pool. In fact she clutched me and held fast while I struggled to recover our balance. And after I had reëstablished our equilibrium I was low enough, mean enough, to pretend we were still in danger, so heavenly sweet it was to me to feel her little hands close clinging.

Whether or not she discovered my perfidy I was not certain, for presently she released her grasp and sat very still and flushed beside me, her eyes fixed on the frivolous brook.

Which drove me uneasily toward conversation – the first refuge of the guilty.

"And so," said I, in a casual and pleasant voice, "you are really a descendant of those ancient Venetians who once occupied Naxos."

"I don't wish to continue the subject," she said.

Snubbed again I relapsed into mournful inertia. Which presently she inspected sideways. And after a while she laughed.

"You are so ridiculous," she said. "No girl, I fancy, can remain angry with you very long."

"Thusis?"

"What?"

"I want to court you. May I?"

"Yes – if you don't make it resemble the other thing."

"I'll be careful."

"Very well."

And, as I remained buried in reflection: "You may fire when ready, Michael."

"Have you ever lived in the United States?" I asked, astonished.

"I was educated there," she replied demurely.

"Oh, Lord!" said I, "that accounts for a lot of things! Why on earth I didn't suspect it I can't imagine – "

"Oh, I'm not typical; I'm international, Michael – cosmopolitan, inter-urban, anti-insular, so to speak – "

"You're inter-stellar, you beautiful bright star! – "

"Michael!"

"What?"

"Is that courtship? Or the other?" she inquired.

"Courtship. It's a perfectly proper flight of astronomical fancy. It's a scientific metaphor, Thusis dear. I'll tell you another:

 
"Some lovers woo the Pleiades
Who shyly flirt from midnight skies,
But all my vows and all my sighs
Are centered in the Cyclades
Where she I love first saw the light
– Thusis divine so slim and white – "
 

"Michael!"

 
"I love her noble mind serene,
I love her ruddy tresses bright,
I love her slender neck so white,
I love her heart so young and clean,
In fact I love her, if she please,
My goddess of the Cyclades – "
 

"Michael!!!"

"What?" said I, annoyed at being checked in my fine frenzy.

"Is – is that courtship?"

"Certainly! Did you never hear of a troubadour? I'm improvising and for God's sake don't interrupt me."

At that she relapsed into meek silence. But I had lost my momentum. It was all off; she had ruined that totally unexpected burst of inspired fluency which had astonished and intoxicated me, whatever it had done to her.

"Damnation," I said.

"Forgive me, Michael. I'm so truly repentant… And it was very, very beautiful."

"It wasn't so bad," I admitted, mollified. "I had no idea I could do it, Thusis."

"It was – agreeable. I liked it. Will you forgive me? Because when I interrupted I punished myself most of all."

"You sweet little thing! – "

"I did. I was worse than Psyche," she went on, "who blew out the candle – too late – the torch of inspiration – Oh, dear, that metaphor is very sadly mixed, Michael, but you understand what I mean. Do you pardon me?"

To reassure her I touched her hands which lay clasped in her lap. She gave a slight start, but as my hand settled and rested there upon both of hers she seemed to become unconscious of the contact.

"I had no idea that you could improvise so cleverly," she said.

"Nor I," said I, frankly. "It's true, however, that I've had some little practice in writing verses – er – recently."

"Have you been writing verses, Michael?"

"Yes."

"About what?"

"About you."

She became interested in my fishing line, and watched it intently. But it was only the current moving it.

"Thusis dear – "

She said hastily: "Remember the difference between courtship and the other!"

"Won't you let me make love to you?"

"I can't, Michael!"

After a pause: "Would you let me if you could?"

"Yes," she said under her breath.

"Dear – "

"Please don't say that!"

"I want to ask you one thing."

"What?"

"You're not married, are you?"

"No."

"Then – "

"It's a more hopeless barrier than that!" she interrupted with a sudden catch in her breath. "I can't let you make love to me. I can't let you love me! I c-can't love you – let myself – do it – "

Her voice was drowned in a terrific roar. All the thunders of the skies seemed to unite in one tremendous outburst.

Deafened, almost stunned, we sat there partly stupefied by the mighty concussion which lengthened into bellowing thunder until the bank of the stream trembled under our feet, and the umbrella wiggled in my hand.

"Good Lord!" I whispered; but Thusis sprang up with a little cry of dismay.

"Don't be afraid, darling!" I cried, preparing to gather her to my breast. But she was excitedly adjusting her field-glasses and focussing them on the Bec de l'Empereur.

And then I perceived that the rain had ceased; that the sun was already blazing through the pass below.

"The devil!" cried Thusis, stamping her pretty foot. Then, in a fury of despair, she turned to me and stretched out one arm, pointing toward the valley pass.

And I saw that it had been utterly obliterated by the mighty avalanche, the earth-shaking thunder of which had petrified us.

Suddenly the gray eyes of Thusis filled with tears of fury and disappointment.

"Oh, Michael! Michael!" she faltered, "what shall we do now! We had them all in the trap! We were ready to spring it to-night! Oh, Michael! Michael! M-my heart is b-broken – "

She walked blindly into my arms – she didn't know what she was about, I suppose. I petted and soothed her; she hid her face on my breast.

"Darling," I said, "I can't bear to see you suffer. I suppose that you and Clelia and Josephine and Raoul had some scheme cooked up to kidnap that bunch of huns at the house and get them over the frontier into France. Didn't you, dear?"

"Y-yes. And just l-look what's happened! Look at this act of God! Why has God let it rain? Why has He let loose this avalanche at such a moment! – at such an agonizing moment when we had all the rats trapped! And our own agents on the frontier to let us through! … Doesn't God realize that all civilization – all Christendom is tottering? Doesn't He know what hell threatens it? Why has He done this thing to us! Can He not see France bled white! – England reeling! – Italy agasp! – America only half ready! – Naxos prostrate under the Greek tyrant's usurping heel! – Tenedos thrown to the Turk! I – I have begun to lose my faith in God!" she cried violently; "the old gods were less cruel – less indifferent. And at least they displayed enough interest to take sides!"