Scene III with an air of cold distrust, that Bella foresaw would mount by

well-known degrees to a climax of scorn.

The lady turned the page.

“‘Mon âme Brûle—Eh! dis au volcan qu’il étouffe sa flamme,’—

“How long are they going on like this, I wonder?” she interrupted herself to durchblätter the pages.

“‘Ah! qui n’oublierait tout à cette voix celeste!’”

And more fingering of the leaves. “Four more solid pages of this sort of thing,” she announced. “Well, if the rest of the world has stood it, I suppose we must.” And she went on—

“‘Ta parole est un chant où rien d’humain ne reste—’”

And on, in a measured staccato, exactly as if she were adding up a column of figures, or telling off yards of tape.

“‘Doña Sol. Viens, ô mon jeune amant, Dans mes bras.’”

Bella dropped the silver dragon, and with, “Wait, Mrs. Mar, _dearest_ Mrs. Mar!” she seized the book.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“This is _my_ part!” said Bella, shutting the volume convulsively. “I know it every bit.”

“‘Voilà notre nuit de noces commencée! Je suis bien pâle, dis, pour une fiancée?’”

And on to—

“‘Mort! non pas! nous dormons, Il dort! c’est mon époux, vois-tu, nous nous aimons, Nous sommes couchés là. C’est notre nuit de noce. Ne le réveillez pas, seigneur duc de Mendoce, Il est las. Mon amour, tiens-toi vers moi tourné. Plus près—plus près encore—’”

Hildegarde, with tears, put out her hand and took Bella’s. No word, just the clasp of hands, till they fell apart to work.

“H’m,” said Mrs. Mar dryly. “I suppose you’ve seen Sarah Bernhardt go on like that.”

“No, oh, no. I don’t like Sarah in this. I do it much better.”

“A good many people seem to be able to put up with the other lady.”

But Bella, smiling, shook her head, as she drew a new strand of silver thread through her needle. “I don’t like seeing her make dear Doña Sol so—so snaky, and so wildly unnatural.”

“Well, if you think Doña Sol’s _natural_—”

Bella laughed. “You’d think she was nature itself compared to Sarah.”

“People said the same thing about Curly what’s-his-name.”

“Curly?”

“Yes, the Englishman who acted with the red-haired woman.”

“Oh, you mean Kyrle—”

“Curl! Is that how he calls himself? Well, I’m sure I’ve no objection. I liked him. But people went about saying _he_ wasn’t natural.”

Bella looked up. “Did you think he was?”

“Certainly not. But I’m a person who likes _acting_. I don’t want them natural.” She wound up in a tone of delicious contempt, “I can see people being natural every day of my life, without paying for it.”

Bella laughed. “Oh, I’m _so_ glad I know you, dear Mrs. Mar!” That lady, unmoved by the tribute, began to do her duty by the notes. Bella never listened to notes, and by and by her little face took on again the tragic look with which she had declaimed, “La fatalité s’accomplit.”

Bella was a good deal changed in this last year. Hildegarde, looking at her paling beauty, was sometimes stricken with fear. “What should I do without her!”

The postman’s ring. Bella jumped up without ceremony in the middle of Note 2, and ran out to see what had come. Only a paper. It wasn’t the postman. Merely the little boy outrageously late with “The Evening News.”

Bella returned to her dragon—Mrs. Mar read on.

After all, who could be sure but what that paper lying there—how did Bella know but it had a Norwegian telegram in it, saying word had come of the rescue in the arctic of a party of Russians under an American leader? Or no, the leader had done the rescuing—against awful odds. Not Bella alone, but two entire continents were celebrating his name. For this was the intrepid explorer of whom nothing had been heard for nearly four years—who had been given up for dead, by all but Bella Wayne.

And this man—oh, it made the heart beat—this man had discovered the Pole. That was why he’d been so long away. It took four years to discover the Pole. But it was done. The whole civilized world was ringing with his name. And natural enough. It was the greatest achievement since Columbus’ own, and the hero’s name was—

No, no, it wouldn’t be like that at all. He would want Bella to be the first to know. The next ring at the door would be a telegram for her. Or no, he would hardly want to break so long a silence in that brusque way. No, he would write her a beautiful long letter—telling her—explaining— No! Far more like him just to appear. Without writing—without telegraphing. Just take the swiftest steamer across the Atlantic, and the fastest train across the Continent, and some evening like this, she, little thinking it the hour that should bring such grace, she would lift up her eyes and there he would be!—standing before her. Not only without a long explanatory letter, without words, her face would be hidden in his breast.

“There!” Mrs. Mar interrupted an alternative soliloquy of Don Carlos, and Bella started. “They’re early! There are the boys, now!”

“I don’t hear them.” But as Hildegarde spoke the words she was conscious of steps on the graveled path, that wound its rather foolish way round this side of the house, leading nowhere. No one ever walked there but Hildegarde herself, cutting or tending flowers. She glanced at Bella, and saw in the wide hazel eyes a light she knew.

On the step came crunching gravel. Bella’s needle arrested half through a stitch, and all Bella’s face saying, “John! John Galbraith!”—and only Hildegarde, through her eyes, hearing. But even Mrs. Mar was under some spell of silence and strained expectation. Now the firm tread paused, and there—there, in front of the low uncurtained window, above the syringas, showed the head and shoulders of a man. Not Trenn, not Harry. Who? Hildegarde held her breath.