As if a magician's wand had touched him, the garland of roses
transformed him into a vision of Oriental beauty. His cheeks were the
color of crushed grapes, and his dusky eyes glowed with a languishing
fire.
"Sapristi!" exclaimed Arobin.
But Mrs. Highcamp had one more touch to add to the picture. She took
from the back of her chair a white silken scarf, with which she had
covered her shoulders in the early part of the evening. She draped it
across the boy in graceful folds, and in a way to conceal his black,
conventional evening dress. He did not seem to mind what she did to him,
only smiled, showing a faint gleam of white teeth, while he continued to
gaze with narrowing eyes at the light through his glass of champagne.
"Oh! to be able to paint in color rather than in words!" exclaimed Miss
Mayblunt, losing herself in a rhapsodic dream as she looked at him.
"'There was a graven image of Desire Painted with red blood on a ground
of gold.'" murmured Gouvernail, under his breath.
The effect of the wine upon Victor was to change his accustomed
volubility into silence. He seemed to have abandoned himself to a
reverie, and to be seeing pleasing visions in the amber bead.
"Sing," entreated Mrs. Highcamp. "Won't you sing to us?"
"Let him alone," said Arobin.
"He's posing," offered Mr. Merriman; "let him have it out."
"I believe he's paralyzed," laughed Mrs. Merriman. And leaning over the
youth's chair, she took the glass from his hand and held it to his lips.
He sipped the wine slowly, and when he had drained the glass she laid it
upon the table and wiped his lips with her little filmy handkerchief.
"Yes, I'll sing for you," he said, turning in his chair toward Mrs.
Highcamp. He clasped his hands behind his head, and looking up at the
ceiling began to hum a little, trying his voice like a musician tuning
an instrument. Then, looking at Edna, he began to sing:
"Ah! si tu savais!"
"Stop!" she cried, "don't sing that. I don't want you to sing it,"
and she laid her glass so impetuously and blindly upon the table as to
shatter it against a carafe. The wine spilled over Arobin's legs and
some of it trickled down upon Mrs. Highcamp's black gauze gown. Victor
had lost all idea of courtesy, or else he thought his hostess was not in
earnest, for he laughed and went on:
"Ah! si tu savais
Ce que tes yeux me disent"--
"Oh! you mustn't! you mustn't," exclaimed Edna, and pushing back her
chair she got up, and going behind him placed her hand over his mouth.
He kissed the soft palm that pressed upon his lips.