As the limousine crawled crackling down the pebbled drive Val’s face was burning.
II
It was dark in Cannes harbor; rather it seemed dark after the brightness of the promenade that Val had just left behind. Three frail dock lights glittered dimly upon innumerable fishing boats heaped like shells along the beach. Farther out in the water there were other lights where a fleet of slender yachts rode the tide with slow dignity, and farther still a full ripe moon made the water bosom into a polished dancing floor. Occasionally there was a swish! creak! drip! as a rowboat moved about in the shallows, and its blurred shape threaded the labyrinth of hobbled fishing skiffs and launches. Val, descending the velvet slope of sand, stumbled over a sleeping boatman and caught the rank savor of garlic and plain wine. Taking the man by the shoulders he shook open his startled eyes.
“Do you know where the Minnehaha is anchored, and the Privateer?”
As they slid out into the bay he lay back in the stern and stared with vague discontent at the Riviera moon. That was the right moon, all right. Frequently, five nights out of seven, there was the right moon. And here was the soft air, aching with enchantment, and here was the music, many strains of music from many orchestras, drifting out from the shore. Eastward lay the dark Cape of Antibes, and then Nice, and beyond that Monte Carlo, where the night rang chinking full of gold. Someday he would enjoy all that, too, know its every pleasure and success—when he was too old and wise to care.
But tonight—tonight, that stream of silver that waved like a wide strand of curly hair toward the moon; those soft romantic lights of Cannes behind him, the irresistible ineffable love in this air—that was to be wasted forever.
“Which one?” asked the boatman suddenly.
“Which what?” demanded Val, sitting up.
“Which boat?”
He pointed. Val turned; above hovered the grey, sword-like prow of a yacht. During the sustained longing of his wish they had covered half a mile.
He read the brass letters over his head. It was the Privateer, but there were only dim lights on board, and no music and no voices, only a murmurous k-plash at intervals as the small waves leaped at the sides.
“The other one,” said Val; “the Minnehaha.”
“Don’t go yet.”
Val started. The voice, low and soft, had dropped down from the darkness overhead.
“What’s the hurry?” said the soft voice. “Thought maybe somebody was coming to see me, and have suffered terrible disappointment.”
The boatman lifted his oars and looked hesitatingly at Val. But Val was silent, so the man let the blades fall into the water and swept the boat out into the moonlight.
“Wait a minute!” cried Val sharply.
“Good-bye,” said the voice. “Come again when you can stay longer.”
“But I am going to stay now,” he answered breathlessly.
He gave the necessary order and the rowboat swung back to the foot of the small companionway. Someone young, someone in a misty white dress, someone with a lovely low voice, had actually called to him out of the velvet dark. “If she has eyes!” Val murmured to himself. He liked the romantic sound of it and repeated it under his breath—“If she has eyes.”
“What are you?” She was directly above him now; she was looking down and he was looking up as he climbed the ladder, and as their eyes met they both began to laugh.
She was very young, slim, almost frail, with a dress that accentuated her youth by its blanched simplicity. Two wan dark spots on her cheeks marked where the color was by day.
“What are you?” she repeated, moving back and laughing again as his head appeared on the level of the deck. “I’m frightened now and I want to know.”
“I am a gentleman,” said Val, bowing.
“What sort of a gentleman? There are all sorts of gentlemen. There was a—there was a colored gentleman at the table next to ours in Paris, and so——” She broke off. “You’re not American, are you?”
“I’m Russian,” he said, as he might have announced himself to be an archangel. He thought quickly and then added, “And I am the most fortunate of Russians. All this day, all this spring I have dreamed of falling in love on such a night, and now I see that heaven has sent me to you.”
“Just one moment!” she said, with a little gasp. “I’m sure now that this visit is a mistake. I don’t go in for anything like that. Please!”
“I beg your pardon.” He looked at her in bewilderment, unaware that he had taken too much for granted. Then he drew himself up formally.
“I have made an error. If you will excuse me I will say good-night.”
He turned away. His hand was on the rail.
“Don’t go,” she said, pushing a strand of indefinite hair out of her eyes. “On second thought you can talk any nonsense you like if you’ll only not go. I’m miserable and I don’t want to be left alone.”
Val hesitated; there was some element in this that he failed to understand. He had taken it for granted that a girl who called to a strange man at night, even from the deck of a yacht, was certainly in a mood for romance. And he wanted intensely to stay. Then he remembered that this was one of the two yachts he had been seeking.
“I imagine that the dinner’s on the other boat,” he said.
“The dinner? Oh, yes, it’s on the Minnehaha. Were you going there?”
“I was going there—a long time ago.”
“What’s your name?”
He was on the point of telling her when something made him ask a question instead.
“And you? Why are you not at the party?”
“Because I preferred to stay here. Mrs. Jackson said there would be some Russians there—I suppose that’s you.” She looked at him with interest. “You’re a very young man, aren’t you?”
“I am much older than I look,” said Val stiffly. “People always comment on it. It’s considered rather a remarkable thing.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one,” he lied.
She laughed.
“What nonsense! You’re not more than nineteen.”
His annoyance was so perceptible that she hastened to reassure him. “Cheer up! I’m only seventeen myself. I might have gone to the party if I’d thought there’d be anyone under fifty there.”
He welcomed the change of subject.
“You preferred to sit and dream here beneath the moon.”
“I’ve been thinking of mistakes.” They sat down side by side in two canvas deck chairs. “It’s a most engrossing subject—the subject of mistakes. Women very seldom brood about mistakes—they’re much more willing to forget than men are. But when they do brood——”
“You have made a mistake?” inquired Val.
She nodded.
“Is it something that cannot be repaired?”
“I think so,” she answered. “I can’t be sure. That’s what I was considering when you came along.”
“Perhaps I can help in some way,” said Val. “Perhaps your mistake is not irreparable, after all.”
“You can’t,” she said unhappily. “So let’s not think