her
slim, pale fingers twice across the strings, sounding a soft,
melancholy chord. When she began to sing, her words were slurred and
languorous, and I had trouble understanding them; for the song was
ancient when Bienville turned the first spadeful of earth that marked
the ramparts of New Orleans:

_O knights of gay Toulouse
And sweet Beaucaire,
Greet me my own true love
And speak him fair_....

"Her voice had the throaty, velvety quality one hears in people of the
Southern countries, and the words of the song seemed fairly to yearn
with the sadness and passionate longing of the love-bereft. But she
smiled as she put by her instrument, a curious smile, which heightened
the mystery of her face, and her wide eyes seemed suddenly half
questing, half drowsy, as she asked, 'Would you ride off upon your
grim, pale horse and leave poor little Julie d'Ayen famishing for
love, _m'sieur_?'

"'Ride off from you?' I answered gallantly. 'How can you ask?' A verse
from Burns came to me:

_Then fare thee well, my bonny lass,
And fare thee well awhile,
And I will come to thee again
An it were ten thousand mile._

"There was something avid in the look she gave me. Something more than
mere gratified vanity shone in her eyes as she turned her face up to
me in the moonlight. 'You mean it?' she demanded in a quivering,
breathless voice.

"'Of course,' I bantered. 'How could you doubt it?'

"'Then swear it--seal the oath with blood!'

"Her eyes were almost closed, and her lips were lightly parted as she
leant toward me. I could see the thin, white line of tiny, gleaming
teeth behind the lush red of her lips; the tip of a pink tongue swept
across her mouth, leaving it warmer, moister, redder than before; in
her throat a small pulse throbbed palpitatingly. Her lips were smooth
and soft as the flower-petals in her hair, but as they crushed on mine
they seemed to creep about them as though endowed with a volition of
their own. I could feel them gliding almost stealthily, searching
greedily, it seemed, until they covered my entire mouth. Then came a
sudden searing burn of pain which passed as quickly as it flashed
across my lips, and she seemed inhaling deeply, desperately, as though
to pump the last faint gasp of breath up from my lungs. A humming
sounded in my ears; everything went dark around me as if I had been
plunged in some abysmal flood; a spell of dreamy lassitude was
steali