But he could not find the L. C. for which he was looking. She had to come to his a.s.sistance. Not here.--Not there. The letters swam before her eyes. She had to try to catch them like the gold fish in her aquarium.

Aha! There it was. There it was! L. v. M., with the coronet above. For at that time she had still dared to use the prohibited name for an occasional adornment.

"Now you see I was right, Konni. Now you will let me drink, won't you.

Here's to you, you sweet little yokel."

He was so struck by this proof that he sank back in his chair and said not a word.

But the uncle and she continued to drink and laugh at him.

When she threw a look into the mirror, she saw as through a billowy haze a red swollen face with rumpled hair under a hat tilted back on the head and two deep flabby furrows running from her mouth to her chin.

This caused her some disquiet. But she had no time to heed her feeling because that unspeakable old uncle had a new joke on the carpet.

"Do you know, Lilly dear, the Chinese way of singing the Lorelei?"

Before she had even heard a syllable she burst out into a wild laugh.

He put one of his bowed legs over the other, pretending it was a Chinese banjo, and played a prelude on the sole of his foot: "Tink-a-tink-a-tink." Then he began in a nasal, croaking, gurgling voice, drawing out his l's endlessly:

O my belong too much sorry, And can me no savy, what kind; Have got one olo piccy story No won't she go outside my mind.

When he came to the second verse,

Dat night belang dark and colo,

he tore his wig from his head to heighten the effect; and he now actually looked the very image of an old, nodding "Chinee," with his shiny pate and his bright slanting slits of eyes.

It was a fascinating, an overpowering spectacle.

Never in her life, not even on the professional stage, had she seen a clown's performance so provocative of side-splitting laughter.

She would have died of envy had she not been Lilly Czepanek, the famous impersonator, who when the spirit moved her, needed but to open her mouth to evoke a storm of applause.

Her matchless repertoire had lain fallow too long. But the beautiful Otero had not yet grown old, Tortajada still set your senses a-whirl with her dancing, and Matchiche had just come into fashion.

Lilly merely had to shove her hat a little further back on her head and lift her black dress--even a Saharet would have had no cause to be ashamed of the silk petticoat she had brought in her trunk--and then off she could go.

And off she went.

Like a whirlwind over the carpet slippery with the yolks of eggs.

"Heigh-ho--ole--ole.

"You must shout ole and clap your hands.

"Ole--e--e!"

The uncle bawled. The floor rocked to and fro in long waves. The lamps and the mirror danced along. All h.e.l.l seemed to be let loose.

"Do shout, Konni,--ole--don't be so downcast. Ole."

"Uncle, you have this on _your_ conscience!"

What did he mean by that?

Why did he burst into sobs?

Why was he standing there white as chalk?

"Ole--Ole--e--e--e."

CHAPTER XXI

It was nearly noon when Lilly woke in a glow of happiness.

The uncle won over--the last obstacle removed--the future lying before her, a land of blossoms and golden fruits.

What a farce and a lark the dreaded examination had been! What a jumping-jack, what a buffoon he was, that keen, penetrating man of the world, who had probably ground women's destinies as he would munch betel nuts.

When she tried to review the events of the evening before, and arrange them in sequence, it came to her with a slight sense of oppression that at the end everything had resolved itself into a fog, shot with light and echoing with song and laughter, just as had happened yonder--in that other life, when she had romped wildly with Richard and the "crew."

She could not puzzle out how she had mounted the steps and reached her room.

As the fog lifted a little, she saw peering out of it a pale, set face, with an expression of pained surprise; she heard an outcry that sounded like a sob or a groan, and saw herself sobbing next to someone who was kneeling, who pushed her away with his hands.

Had that happened?

Had she dreamt it?

Why, she had sung and danced so beautifully, she had disclosed her greatest talents. Could they by any possibility have displeased him? Had she gone too far in her self-abandonment?

Her anxiety waxed.

She jumped out of bed and dressed herself, possessed by one thought: "To go to him!"

At twelve o'clock the door-bell rang.

It was, it must be he!

But when she hurried to the door to throw herself into his arms with a cry of relief, she found, not him, but his uncle, who stood twirling his hat in his horrid fingers like a pet.i.tioner, and looked up at her with an oily, wry smile, most obnoxious to her.

"Is the examination to begin again?" The question rose in her mind. "Or is it just going to begin?"

Her welcome died on her lips.