"Thank heaven, THAT'S over!" exclaimed the lounger in the hammock, who had not once removed his fascinated stare from the expressive face of Valentine Corliss. "If you have now concluded with dull care, allow me to put a vital question: Mr. Corliss, do you sing?"
The gentleman addressed favoured him with a quizzical glance from between half-closed lids, and probably checking an impulse to remark that he happened to know that his questioner sometimes sang, replied merely, "No."
"It is a pity."
"Why?"
"Nothing," returned the other, inconsequently. It just struck me that you ought to sing the Toreador song."
Richard Lindley, placing the notes and maps in his pocket, dropped them, and, stooping, began to gather the scattered papers with a very red face. Corliss, however, laughed good-naturedly.
"That's most flattering," he said; "though there are other things in `Carmen' I prefer--probably because one doesn't hear them so eternally."
Vilas pulled himself up to a sitting position and began to swing again. "Observe our host, Mr. Corliss," he commanded gayly. "He is a kind old Dobbin, much beloved, but cares damn little to hear you or me speak of music. He'd even rather discuss your oil business than listen to us talk of women, whereas nothing except women ever really interests YOU, my dear sir. He's not our kind of man," he concluded, mournfully;
"not at all our kind of man!"
"I hope," Corliss suggested, "he's going to be my kind of man in the development of these oil-fields."
"How ridic"--Mr. Vilas triumphed over the word after a slight struggle--"ulous! I shall review that: ridiculous of you to pretend to be interested in oil-fields. You are not that sort of person whatever. Nothing could be clearer than that you would never waste the time demanded by fields of oil.
Groundlings call this `the mechanical age'--a vulgar error. My dear sir, you and I know that it is the age of Woman! Even poets have begun to see that she is alive. Formerly we did not speak of her at all, but of late years she has become such a scandal that she is getting talked about. Even our dramas, which used to be all blood, have become all flesh. I wish I were dead--but will continue my harangue because the thought is pellucid. Women selecting men to mate with are of only two kinds, just as there are but two kinds of children in a toy-shop. One child sets its fancy on one partic"--the orator paused, then continued--"on one certain toy and will make a distressing scene if she doesn't get it: she will have that one; she will go straight to it, clasp it and keep it; she won't have any other. The other kind of woman is to be understood if you will make the experiment of taking the other kind of child to a toy-shop and telling her you will buy her any toy in the place, but that you will buy her only one. If you do this in the morning, she will still be in the shop when it is closing for the night, because, though she runs to each toy in turn with excitement and delight, she sees another over her shoulder, and the one she has not touched is always her choice--until she has touched it! Some get broken in the handling. For my part, my wires are working rather rustily, but I must obey the Stage-Manager. For my requiem I wish somebody would ask them to play Gounod's masterpiece."
"What's that?" asked Corliss, amused.
"`The Funeral March of a Marionette!'"
"I suppose you mean that for a cheerful way of announcing that you are a fatalist."
"Fatalism? That is only a word, declared Mr. Vilas gravely.
"If I am not a puppet then I am a god. Somehow, I do not seem to be a god. If a god is a god, one thinks he would know it himself. I now yield the floor. Thanking you cordially, I believe there is a lady walking yonder who commands salutation."
He rose to his feet, bowing profoundly. Cora Madison was passing, strolling rather briskly down the street, not in the direction of her home. She waved her parasol with careless gayety to the trio under the trees, and, going on, was lost to their sight.
"Hello!" exclaimed Corliss, looking at his watch with a start of surprise. "I have two letters to write for the evening mail. I must be off."
At this, Ray Vilas's eyes--still fixed upon him, as they had been throughout the visit--opened to their fullest capacity, in a gaze of only partially alcoholic wildness.
Entirely aware of this singular glare, but not in the least disconcerted by it, the recipient proffered his easy farewells.
"I had no idea it was so late. Good afternoon. Mr. Vilas, I have been delighted with your diagnosis. Lindley, I'm at your disposal when you've looked over my data. My very warm thanks for your patience, and--addio!"
Lindley looked after him as he strode quickly away across the green lawn, turning, at the street, in the direction Cora had taken; and the troubled Richard felt his heart sink with vague but miserable apprehension. There was a gasp of desperation beside him, and the sound of Ray Vilas's lips parting and closing with little noises of pain.
"So he knows her," said the boy, his thin body shaking.
"Look at him, damn him! See his deep chest, that conqueror's walk, the easy, confident, male pride of him: a true-born, natural rake--the Toreador all over!"
His agitation passed suddenly; he broke into a loud laugh, and flung a reckless hand to his companion's shoulder.
"You good old fool," he cried. "YOU'LL never play Don Jose!"
