The Game and the Candle
Copyright© 2024 by Eleanor M. Ingram
Chapter 20: Closed
Beyond, the marble arches, the brilliancy, the color and movement of the vast ball-room; here, the perfumed dusk of the conservatory’s mimic garden, lighted by tiny jeweled lamps hung among the flowers. And over both atmospheres the dreamlike enchantment of the strange national music that Adrian loved. Sighing, Allard leaned forward, his eyes delighting in contemplation of the girl opposite.
“To see you like this! Theodora, I have so sorrowfully pictured you as changed, as grieved and saddened out of the brightness I so longed to keep for you. And you are the same, always the same, dear.”
She smiled, half-tenderly, half in indulgent mockery.
“But I am not the same, nor are you, John. I am twenty-five instead of nineteen, and much wiser than Theo Leslie used to be. While you—his excellency Monsieur Allard of the imperial household, is somewhat older and much more dignified, and a trifle more interesting. When I see you moving through this court with so much ease, in all your gorgeousness so naturally worn,”—she made a laughing gesture to the gemmed orders—”I think—I think perhaps it is well we have both grown.”
The truth of the judgment held him, and sent a startled hope.
“If we have grown nearer, Theo?”
“I have tried to say—that. Can you guess how mamma and I have followed you through scattered newspaper articles and items of European news? How we rejoiced and cried together when you saved the Emperor from death and were yourself wounded, when your name was everywhere? You wrote so seldom, and never to me.”
“I thought you must hate me for leaving Robert; I never forgot that.”
Her vivid face grew serious, her eyes fell to the fan in her lap.
“I could never have felt so, whatever you had done. John, the last morning he spoke to us, Robert said that for us you had made a sacrifice we could not even conceive. He told us that we must never question you nor seek to know, but that you were above all blame. Perhaps I had already guessed you were not happy, remembering the night before you went away.”
“There was never one like Robert,” he said, gratitude a pain. “Theodora, I never wondered that you loved him.”