“Not that, not that!” It was Jacqueline’s voice. “Listen, mon cheri, I–I thank him. Au contraire, I do! And–and you must, too!”
518Driscoll stared at all three, first at one, then at another. He floundered, stupefied. Here was this loving girl, clinging to him as though he might vanish, and he had left her that morning a disdainful beauty. Then here was this Meagre Shanks with his mysterious ten minutes, and here was this dumfounding product of those ten minutes. Driscoll put forth an open hand.
“Dan,” he muttered incoherently, “you’re a–a wonder, too!”
Boone clenched the proffered hand in his own. “I never once thought, Jack,” he said earnestly, contritely, “never once, that she cared so ever-lastingly much.”
“Well,” said Driscoll, “don’t do it again.”
“Not unless,” ventured Boone, “not unless she should ever want a little antidote for ennui. By the way, mademoiselle, do you thank me for the quaver of emotion, for the frisson?”
“Frisson?” she repeated scornfully, with loathing. For once she had been unaware of the prized knife-like tremor. In the fear of losing one dear she had lost consciousness of self. She had lived the tremor, the agony, and it was too dreadful, “No, monsieur,” she said, “I want no more of art. I–I want to live!”
“You needed something, though,” said Berthe, “to make you find it out.”
Driscoll looked curiously at the two girls.
“Yes, J-Jack’leen”–how quaintly awkward he was, trying her old tomboy nickname without the “Miss!”–“Yes, what was the matter with you, anyhow?”
“Parbleu, I forgot!” cried Jacqueline in dismay. “I was not to have monsieur, no!” And Jacqueline’s chin, tilting back with elaborate hauteur, was meant to indicate that she was in her first mind about it.
Berthe laughed outright, and softly clapped her hands.
“Sho’,” declared Mr. Boone, “the matter was nothing, nothing at all!”
519But before feminine caprices and scruples it is wiser to bow low into the dust. Jacqueline turned on the editorial personage with vast indignation. “You leave the room, Seigneur Troubadour,” she commanded, “and Berthe, you march with him. Haste, both of you!”
They went, meekly. Their attempt to hide content over the dismissal together was extreme, but transparent.
“What was it?” Driscoll insisted, when he and Jacqueline were alone once more.
“You mean,” she exclaimed, “that you are going to quarrel–now?”
“Jack’leen, what was it?”
“I reck-on,” she observed demurely, “that the animal disputans was–was right, after all. It was nothing, I–reck-on.”
He noted mockery, defiance. There was much too much independence after her late surrender. He went up to her and deliberately reassumed the mastery. He held her, by force. “Mon chevalier,” she murmured softly. So she confessed his strength.
“Tell me,” he said.
“And you did not guess? You–Oh, how I hated you! How I never wanted to see you, never again! Not after, not after–Mon Dieu, you were two exasperating idiots, you and poor Prince Max! He virtually threw me into your arms. But I, monsieur, am not a person to be thrown. That is, unless–unless I do it myself, which–I did, hélas!”
The trooper’s grip tightened on her arms. “Then you,” he said earnestly, “would have let me lose you?”
She laughed merrily at him.
“And would not you have followed after me?”
“W’y, little girl, I reckon I certainly would of.”
“Don’t,” she gasped. “Let me come–closer. Oh dear, how can the bon Dieu let people be so happy–s-o happy!”