CHAPTER XXXI.

THE MEETING

If Barry Cumberland had his weaknesses--and who has not?--he had one marked virtue. He knew what he wanted, and always headed straight for his objective. In fact, his impulsiveness was excessive and sometimes overrode his practical common sense.

He was wise enough to know this, for he was well stocked with imagination; and, safely lodged at the Hôtel Chatham that afternoon, he made a direct move, which was characteristic, but one that allowed of safe withdrawal in the event of failure. This was sound strategy. His tentative advance was suggested by the name of the mysterious guest--“Devina.”

John Cumberland sometimes spoke of a Madame Devina, a once famous operatic soprano of the Metropolitan Opera; an idol of New York who had disappeared from the musical world at the height of her success. She had been entertained at the Cumberland home more than once during a brilliant season notable for her singing of Thaïs--the rôle which had made her reputation. Those days Barry could just remember and no more. They belonged to the dreams of childhood in which his dainty mother figured as the centre of a wonderful world.

Now, those memories served a good purpose, and, seated in his room, he wrote the following note:

Dear Madam:

Please forgive an impulsive countryman for intruding. But I chanced to see your name in the register to-day, and it reminded me of the fact that my father, John Cumberland, and my mother, were formerly friends of Madame Devina. As the name is an unusual one, I venture to ask if you are related to that lady. If you are, I should be more than happy to make your acquaintance, and my father, I know, would be delighted to hear of you.

Respectfully, Barry Cumberland.

This he directed to “Miss Marguerite Devina” and gave to a page to be delivered to her in person.

His letter dispatched, Barry restlessly crossed to the window, which he threw open. It overlooked a garden courtyard, which for some reason cast his memory back to Shepheard’s in Cairo. Many balconies looked down upon this sheltered oasis, and he allowed his imagination to tell him that one of them belonged to the room of Zalithea.…

Zalithea! Was there any such person as Zalithea? Had there _ever_ been a Zalithea?

Once, this thing which had happened would have frightened him and set him questioning his own sanity. But now, as Jim had said that morning, “If _you_ are mad, _I’m_ mad, too!”

Would she answer? Would she consent to see him? If she refused, what next?

His anxiety and impatience made it impossible for Barry to keep still. He walked away from the window; paced the room; listened at his door for the footsteps of the returning messenger; then went across to the window again.

For long minutes he stood there, moving restlessly. He lost track of time. A knocking on his door recalled him to reality. He turned, his heart leaping.

“Come in!” he cried.

The page entered. At a glance Barry saw that he brought no note.

“Miss Devina will be downstairs at four o’clock, m’sieur.”

No doubt the world went on as usual during the next hour, and Paris lived and loved and laughed as Paris has done from time immemorial; but to Barry the interval afterward appeared to have been a blank--a hiatus in existence. Four o’clock came at last.…

She was seated in a cane chair before a little round table set for tea. She stood up as he crossed to her.

“It was nice of you, Mr. Cumberland,” he heard her saying in Zalithea’s unforgettable voice!

He found himself seated beside her. A waiter was serving English tea and handing little dishes of cakes, biscuits, and sweetmeats. This Barry saw and heard through a sort of fog. Everything was muffled. His sensations were almost identical with those he had known toward the close of his farewell college supper. Presently, in a voice not unlike his own:

“You have not told me,” someone said, “if my guess was right. Are you related to Madame Devina?”

“Devina was my mother.”

The fog was cleared away by that definite, simple statement. The merciful numbness which alone had enabled Barry to behave himself rationally thus far left him. He looked into long, dark eyes.

“You know that we have met before?” he said.

Marguerite Devina watched him unflinchingly.

“You had an accident some months ago right outside my door,” she replied. “But I didn’t know that you saw me. You were unconscious when we found you.”

Barry clenched his teeth. An insane desire to laugh came to him. He knew he must fight it.

“You are referring to my crash in New Jersey?” he said evenly, tonelessly.

“Yes. You must have wondered why we behaved so oddly afterward. The fact is that my guardian and I were booked to sail for Europe, and we realized that if we appeared in the matter it would almost certainly mean delay. We couldn’t afford that, you see.”

“Your guardian? Mr. Brown?”

“Oh, no!” she laughed--Zalithea’s beloved laughter!--“Mr. Brown was the man who drove you to the hospital and took care of your car. We were tenants of his.” She hesitated, bit her lip, and: “When did you see me?” she asked--“before or after the accident?”

“Before,” said Barry. “On the balcony.”

“Yes,” murmured the girl, bending to pour out tea--“It’s a queer thing to admit, but I’m fascinated by lightning. Do you think--it was seeing me there that--caused you to crash?”

“No,” Barry replied promptly. He was watching the slim hands, the turn of her wrists, the line, seen below a smart little hat, of her creamy neck. “You were dressed very oddly.”

She stooped forward over the sugar bowl.

“Yes; I was--trying on a fancy costume.” She glanced up quickly. “Two lumps?”

“One, please.” He watched her dazedly. “It’s amazing to think that my father knew your mother. I have heard him speak of her singing Thaïs.”

“The critics said she did not merely _sing_ Thaïs, she _was_ Thaïs.”

“Is she----?”

“She died when I was a baby,” the girl replied simply. “Here, in Paris.”

“You were born in Paris?”

“Yes.”

“How did you come to live in America?”

“My foster-father is an American. He was once engaged to marry my mother, you see. But she changed her mind--unfortunately.”

As she spoke the final word, an expression of such implacable hatred crept over her beautiful face that Barry flinched. It was so that he remembered her on that night in the _wâdi!_

“It’s dreadful to say and dreadful to hear,” she went on; “but my father ruined my mother, in every sense of the word. She would have died in a pauper’s hospital but for Paul Ahmes.”

“Who is Paul Ahmes?” Barry asked, a sort of new awe in his voice.

Marguerite Devina glanced up at him, and her eyes were very bright.

“He is the greatest-hearted soul in the world,” she answered in a queer tone of challenge. “My mother brought him nothing but sorrow. Yet he spent all he had to try to make her happy--at the end. And he took the place of my father--afterward.”

“And is he, also, an operatic artist?”

She gave a little choking laugh.

“No,” she replied. “He is, or used to be, a vaudeville artist! He retired years ago. He was known throughout Europe as ‘The Great Ahmes.’ He was an illusionist. Not so famous as Houdini, but equally clever in his own way.”

Watching her closely and trying to steady his voice:

“Ahmes is surely an Egyptian name?” said Barry.

“Yes,” she replied composedly. “He used to work as an Egyptian. There is Arab blood on his father’s side. He was always billed as ‘The Wizard of the Sphinx.’”

With a curious eagerness she poured out these confidences. Obviously she wanted to do so. She watched Barry with those long, lovely eyes, as if inviting further and closer cross-examination; as if challenging him to put her upon trial.

“Is--your guardian--in Paris?”

“I expect him to-day.”

“Did you expect _me?_”

The abruptness of the thrust startled her, Barry determined. But if it were so her defence remained impregnable.

“No,” she replied, laughing; “how could I?”

And even as she lowered her dark lashes and looked in her bag for a cigarette, sanity whispered: “How could she? This girl, whose every movement, every expression, every feature, and every mannerism are familiar, yet is not, cannot be, Zalithea!”

Memory plays odd tricks at times, and as Barry struck a match to light their cigarettes, a hitherto forgotten remark of Professor Blackwell’s flashed, intact, through his mind. It had been made on the evening that the Professor had examined Zalithea. “There is a small scar under the hair, just above the right ear, which suggests that the theory--now generally accepted, I believe--that surgery was practised by the ancients is not without foundation.”

“Have you a small scar under your hair above the right ear?” he asked suddenly.

At this Marguerite Devina unmistakably grew pale.

“Yes,” she answered, and looked at him with half-veiled alarm. “How strange you should know that!”

“Professor Blackwell told me.”

“Is he a clairvoyant?”

“No,” said Barry, and laughed without mirth. He met the glance of the dark eyes. “I once thought _I_ was, though. Now--I don’t know what to think. But there’s something I must tell you. Perhaps I should have told you right away. You are the living image, a miraculous double, of someone----”

“Someone?”

“Someone I love very dearly. There! I’ve told you! I came here, to Paris, to find her. And when I saw _you_----”

His voice failed him. He turned his head aside miserably.

The girl was silent for a time; then, very gently:

“Do you mean,” she asked, “that you have come from America to--look for her?”

Barry nodded.

“What made you think you would find her in Paris?”

“I don’t know. We were--very happy in Paris. But I’m on my way to Egypt.”

“To Egypt!”

“Yes. That was where--we met.”

“And you really expect to meet her again, in Egypt?”

“I don’t dare to expect. But if I left off hoping----”

He did not complete the sentence. Marguerite Devina had abruptly stood up. Her head was averted.

“Please forgive me,” said Barry. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Even as the words left his lips, he remembered where he had last uttered them--and to whom. She turned to him impulsively, and the memory was complete. Her lashes were wet with tears.

“You haven’t!” she said. “But I must go.”

Barry reached out a detaining hand.

“Please,” he pleaded, “let me see you again!”

She averted her head once more, and:

“If I can,” she murmured. “I’m sorry--but I must hurry away now.”

And, stumbling in her haste, she walked around the little table and ran across the lobby.…

Back to his room Barry went in a state of mind which he found himself incapable of analyzing. Was it possible, in the natural order of things, for two human beings to be so absolutely alike? As well ask himself if it were possible for a girl to live three thousand years! One being possible, why not the other?

He was curiously reluctant to leave the hotel. Therefore Jim dined with him in the grill room whose chef has been preserved for posterity by Orpen’s brush. Of Marguerite Devina they saw nothing. At the end of dinner:

“If I don’t stop thinking about this muddle,” Jim declared, “I shall become completely cuckoo. It’s the Folies Bergères or a lunatic asylum for mine. Make your selection.”

The selection was made. And it was at a late hour (Paris time) that Barry returned to the Chatham. The night porter handed him a letter.

In his room he tore open the envelope. He began to read. Then, rushing to the telephone, he banged the lever up and down in a frenzy of impatience. At last:

“Hullo! Hullo!” he called, in a high, unnatural voice. “Ring Miss Marguerite Devina!”

“Miss Devina left this evening, m’sieur.”

And when dawn came it found Barry haggard, wild-eyed, pacing the room, ever and anon taking up a crumpled letter and reading and rereading it.