"Was she acting?" I asked myself, as I passed through the windows to the gardens beyond, to find and take up my station by the fountain in which was the statue of Hercules killing the Hydra; "was she acting when she whispered my name and when she made that slight but perceptible clutch at her dress?" As for the tinge of red, I doubted if she could act that, since, so far as I knew, it was not to be accomplished--no! not even by La Gautier, whom I had seen often enough in the past at the Odéon. Still, I remembered she was a good actress--had she not impersonated a wandering singing-girl from Provence when I first knew her; and had she not deceived even so astute a beast as Marcieu, the spy who tried to arrest her! So I could not answer the question, but went on down the _allées_, and past stone fauns and satyrs, and gentlemen in togas and ladies in--well! not in gowns made by court furnishers--and, at last, in the centre of a great _rond_, covered with crushed shells and tiny pebbles that hurt the feet, I came upon the fountain and the figure of Hercules. Then, being there, I sat me down on the high stone rim of the basin, into which the water was falling from the hydra heads with a vastly cool and pleasing splash, and waited, beneath the moon, which sailed clear and cloudless in the skies, for the dénouement. That, however, was a little while in coming, and though more than one couple passed me, the vizard-masked face of the cavalier being almost invariably bent down over the upturned vizard-masked face of the accompanying dame (so that one might well guess it was the eternal romance being whispered in willing ears), she for whom I waited did not herself appear.
Not for a little while, as I have said--yet, at last.
Down one of the little pleached alleys I heard the rustle of a woman's robe, and saw the long, lithe figure that I knew so well--that I had never forgotten since I first saw it in the spangled dress of the mountebank she pretended to be. I saw, too, the moonbeams glint upon the lovely face, and recognised it instantly, though she, too, wore her vizard-mask. Then she was close to me, close to where I had stepped out on to the shell-strewn path, and calling "Adrian"--somewhat loudly, as I thought--while she drew near.
