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The woman looked down, and for a moment a shadow seemed to rest upon her a something tangible and even fearful, that lent to her mask-like face a momentary humanity. "Mon ami," she said, in a toneless voice, "do you remember that Jacques is ten years dead?"
A shadow seemed to darken the mask-like features of the visitor; his gaze at once glittering, vaguely questioning, was fastened on the wall; then slowly, without answering, he got up. "Surmises are not to enter into this matter," he said shortly. "It is facts, I want facts!" "And your lordship shall have them. The case appears simple; not hard to get at the bottom of!"
It was Arithelli not "Fatalité" who smiled back at him. The little mask-like face changed and grew soft till she looked more a girl, less an embodied tragedy. Vardri's wild spirits were infectious, and, as on the night of the Hippodrome fiasco, Youth called and Love made answer. "Mon ami, I am so glad you have come." "Is this the first time you have been out? Who said you could get up?
She had paused there, on her way from Fanny's to her own room, and was looking into the garden, where a pair of silent nuns were pacing up and down the paths, turning now their backs with the heavy sable coiffure sweeping their black robes, and now their still, mask-like faces, set in that stiff framework of white linen.
Yorke swung up on the splendid, mettled black "Parson." He had an ideal cavalry seat, and as with an easy grace he gently controlled his impatient horse, with an inscrutable, mask-like countenance he watched Redmond and the sorrel "Fox." With toe in the leather-covered stirrup the latter reached for the saddle-horn.
If he had sat opposite, or had moved into the perspective, I might once in a while have caught a glimpse, over my glass or spoon, of his smileless, mask-like face, a thing impossible, of course, with him constantly behind my chair.
Neither did the mask-like stillness of their faces change. But Hare saw in their eyes a pointed clear flame, vibrating like a compass-needle, a mere glimmering spark. "I'd like to know," continued Dave, calmly poking the fire, "who hired Dene's men to plug the waterhole. Dene couldn't do that. He loves a horse, and any man who loves a horse couldn't fill a waterhole in this desert."
Tresler looked hard at the face before him. Mask-like as it was, it yet conveyed something of the fierce temper behind it. He was glad he saw something of it, for he felt more justified in the heat of his own feelings. The man's words were a studied insult, and he was not one to submit to insults from anybody.
Samson's face was mask-like, but, as he surveyed the foreigner, only the ingrained dictates of the country's hospitable code kept out of his eyes a gleam of scorn for this frail member of a sex which should be stalwart. "Howdy?" he said. Then he added suspiciously: "What mout yer business be in these parts, stranger?"
His mask-like immobility broke up ... was gone. Her own tears falling, she stretched her arms to him; yet while his eyes devoured her, his arms hungered for her, he delayed, knitting his brows. She caught a word or two, whispered brokenly. He asked himself: "Can this be Love?" "It is Love! Owen, I kissed you one night when I found you sleeping! When will you kiss me back again?"
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