'You are a silly boy,' she said; 'a dear, nice, affectionate, silly boy!' She released her hand and caressed his cheek again. 'If you were older than you are I shouldn't allow you to take these liberties, you know.' Then she bent forward sideways a little, and allowed her hand to stray beyond his shoulder. 'What makes you fancy that you love an old woman like me, Paul?

'It's no fancy,' he said; 'it's life or death with me, Claudia.'

'Poor boy,' said Miss Belmont caressingly, and so moved nearer to him and drew his head to her shoulder. 'Am I kind to you, Paul?'

'You are an angel,' said Paul

'Isn't it rather cruel to be kind to you, Paul?'

He buried his hot face in the soft drapery of her shoulder, and gave a murmured 'No; oh, no!'

'You think you love me, but it's only a boy's fancy, Paul It will pa.s.s away. I suppose it's happy whilst it lasts, when I am kind to you. But it can't last long. I shall be sorry to part, for I like you very much.'

'We mustn't part,' said Paul huskily. 'Claudia, if you left me I should break my heart.'

'No, no,' she answered, drawing him a little nearer. 'Hearts are not so easily broken.'

'Easily!' he said. 'Do you think it's easy, Claudia, to live as I do?

I'm in heaven now, and I'd give my life to be with you for an hour like this. But when I'm away from you, when I see you in that beast Bannister's arms, and remember the only time I ever kissed you--oh, why were you so kind then, and why are you so cold and cruel now?'

'Cold? Cruel?' She stroked his flushed cheek with her soft fingers. 'I let you kiss me because I thought what a dear, nice handsome boy you were; but I should never have done it if I had thought that you would be so silly after it. If you were not so very silly I should like to kiss you, because it's a woman's way to kiss the people that she's really fond of. But you _are_ so foolish, Paul dear, that I dare not.'

'I won't be foolish,' said Paul, lifting his head, and looking at her.

'Well,' she said, 'will you give me your word of honour to stay here for five minutes after I am gone if I give you just one kiss, and not to beg me for another, and not to try to get into the same carriage with me going home?'

'Don't ask me that,' he besought her.

'Ah, Paul,' she said tenderly, 'don't you think for a moment that I am a woman, and that this foolish world would talk about me, even with you, if I gave it only the shadow of a chance? Come; I must go now. Promise.'

'The kiss,' said Paul.

'The promise,' said Miss Belmont.

'Yes, I promise. If you asked me to leap over the rocks in front of us I'd do it.'

'Give me your hands, then. You won't try to keep me?'

'No, no, no.'

She kissed him warmly and lingeringly on the lips, and darted suddenly away. Paul rose to his feet and held out his arms towards her.

'Your promise,' she said. 'Your word of honour as a gentleman.' He dropped his hands. 'You shall be paid for that,' she whispered, with a face glowing like his own, and she returned to him and kissed him once more, holding his hands in hers. Then she left him swiftly and ran down the pathway, turning at the bend to waft a last kiss to him, and so was gone.

Paul mooned about in a miserable, aching ecstasy for a quarter of an hour or so, and then, finding by his watch that the supper-hour appointed by Darco was near at hand, he sauntered to the hotel. Miss Belmont was there before him, radiant and serene, and looking as unkissable as Diana. Paul would have approached her, but a mere motion of her fine eyebrows warned him off. He ate little, but he drank a good deal of wine, and was gay and moody by turns as he was driven home. And far into the night in his own room he walked up and down and made verses and raved them in whispers to himself, because Darco slept in the next apartment, and was not at all the man to be wisely awakened by the voice of Love's young dream. He drew his curtains apart and opened his window on the scented night, and took the moon and stars into his confidence, and the kisses bit softly down into his heart like fire.

Other scenes there were in which the cunning damsel betrayed Paul into the belief that he was an enn.o.bling and lofty influence in her life. She was rigid in her choice of topics for conversation, but she ornamented her speech now and then with an almost masculine embroidery, and once she caught Paul looking at her with a shocked and wounded air.

'I caught your look,' she said, as soon as she could speak to him alone.

'I know what it meant, and, oh! you made me hate myself. There isn't any real harm in it--I mean, it isn't wicked--but it isn't refined or womanly, and I'll 'never do it again--never, never, never, for my dear little Paul's sake. And Paul shall have a kiss for teaching Claudia a lesson. Naughty Claudia!'

And again one day at rehearsal Miss Belmont ordered a brandy-and-soda, and Paul's face clouded; and Claudia was penitent, and Paul got more kisses for helping naughty Claudia to forget these man-like habits.

The boy's infatuation chimed in with a growing liking for the stage, and he volunteered to work there with so much ardour that Darco was newly pleased with him, and gave him ample opportunity. So he saw more and more of Claudia, and made some progress in his new craft, and the foolish game of love went on, until it brought about a crisis.

It was three o'clock on Friday afternoon, and Paul was at the theatre, seated in the manager's room, counting and putting into envelopes the weekly salaries of the company. He had just consigned the two crispest and cleanest of his small stock of five-pound notes and the brightest half-sovereign to an envelope bearing the name of Miss Claudia Belmont, when the lady herself tapped at the door and entered.

'I wanted to see you alone, Paul dear,' she said, 'and so I came over early. I have a piece of news for you. It is very sad news for me, but I am afraid you will not think it so.'

'If it grieves you it grieves me,' said Paul; 'you can't have a trouble that I don't share.'

'I am going away,' she said, walking to the window and looking out on a shabby back-yard which was full of rotting scenery and old stage-lumber of all sorts.

'Going away?' Paul repeated.

He was dazed and numbed, as if he had received a blow.

'Yes,' said Claudia. 'Mr. Darco and I have never hit it off very well together, and now I am going. I have a very good offer for London, and I leave at the end of next week.'

'But I can put things right with Mr. Darco,' said Paul; 'I know I can.'

'No,' she said, with a seeming gentle sadness; 'it's quite impossible.

My position here has grown intolerable, and, besides that, everything is arranged; I have signed for London this afternoon.'

Paul said nothing for the time, for the intelligence crushed him.

'I was afraid that you would be hurt,' she added, after a pause. 'I am glad to see that you can take it more easily than I can.'

'Claudia!' said Paul miserably, and sat staring before him with a white face.

'I did almost hope,' she said, 'that you would have cared a little.'

'Can't you see?' he answered--' oh, can't you see?'

'I don't want play-acting, Paul,' said Claudia, searching for her handkerchief, 'After all we have been to each other I expected a little genuine feeling.'

'Claudia,' he burst out, 'you mustn't go; you mustn't leave me. I should break my heart without you.'

'I must go, Paul,' said Claudia.

'Then I will go,' cried Paul; 'I can't part from you.'

'How can you go, silly boy?' she answered, suffering him to take her hand in his and place his arm about her waist; 'you have nothing to do in London; you know n.o.body there. You have excellent prospects here with Darco.'

'Where you go I go,' said the young idiot stanchly. 'I could not live apart from you. You're the world to me, Claudia.'

He meant it, every word, and in his contradictory heat and flurry and despair he felt as if there were no words at his call which were strong enough to express him.