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Updated: June 29, 2025
The lamp flared on her white, childish face, showing him wild joy and horror strangely mingled. Her great eyes laughed up at him. "Billikins, darling! You aren't very decent, are you? I'm not decent either, Billikins. I'd like to take off all my clothes and dance on my head." He laughed grimly. "You will certainly have to undress the sooner the better." She spread out her hands.
Very soon she came lightly out and joined him, an impudent smile on her sallow little face, dancing merriment in her eyes. "Oh, poor old Billikins!" she said, commiseratingly. "You were bored last night, weren't you? I wonder if I could teach you to dance." "I wonder," said Merryon. His eyes dwelt upon her in her fresh white muslin. What a child she looked!
"They look like alabaster, don't they?" She caught a cluster to her and held it against her cheek for a moment. Merryon was close behind her. She seemed to realize his nearness quite suddenly, for she let the flowers go abruptly and flitted on. He followed her till, at the farther end of the veranda, she turned and faced him. "Good-night, Billikins," she said, lightly.
And he tried to go back and I shut the door and then he crouched down beside it and worried babykins an' tore holes in her an' whined an' growled an' trembled as if he was most scared to death. Now, wasn't it queer and strange, Miss Harry?" Billikins had stopped eating and was looking up into their faces as if he understood what they were talking about.
You don't seem to realize that I'm as human as the rest of the world. But I don't defend myself. I was an infernal brute to let myself go like that." "Oh, no, you weren't, Billikins!" Quite unexpectedly she answered him. "You couldn't help it. Men are like that. And I'm glad you're human. But but" she faltered a little "I want to feel that you're safe, too.
Merryon said the words over oddly to himself; and then, still fast holding her, he began to feel for the face that was so strenuously hidden from him. She resisted him desperately. "Let me go!" she begged, piteously. "I'll be so good, Billikins. I'll go to the Hills. I'll do anything you like. Only let me go now! Billikins!"
"Ah, do you believe in God?" she murmured. "I do," he said, firmly. She gave a little sob. "Oh, Billikins, so do I. At least, I think I do; but I'm half afraid, even now, though I did try to do the right thing. I shall only know for certain when the dream comes true." Her face came upwards, her lips moved softly against his neck. "Darling," she whispered, "don't you hope it'll be a boy?"
He bent and gravely kissed her. Her lips returned his kiss shyly, quiveringly. "You're the nicest man I ever met, Billikins," she said. "Good-night!" She slipped from his encircling arm and was gone. The man stood motionless where she had left him, wondering at himself, at her, at the whole rocking universe. She had kindled the Magic Fire in him indeed! His whole being was aglow.
You led him on." She gave a little nervous laugh against his breast. "I never meant to, Billikins. I I don't much like men as a rule." "You manage to conceal that fact very successfully," he said. She laughed again rather piteously. "You don't know me," she whispered. "I'm not like that all through." "I hope not," said Merryon, severely.
"For the sahib's hands alone," he said. Merryon snatched up the note and opened it with shaking hands. It was very brief, pathetically so, and as he read a great emptiness seemed to spread and spread around him in an ever-widening desolation. "Good-bye, my Billikins!" Ah, the pitiful, childish scrawl she had made of it! "I've come to my senses, and I've gone back to him.
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