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For I will then come to you, free to give you all that life and love can give. "But promise me now that Madame Raffoni shall lead me to you if you need me. You can trust her. I will come to her home. I cannot bear this agony, and I am watched, also!" Even as he spoke, the heavens blackened and a stormy drift of rain swept athwart the sky. There was a muttering roll of thunder.
Irma Gluyas was now sobbing wildly, her head resting on the bosom of the woman who had been Braun's dupe as well as slave; the woman who had feebly enacted the role of Madame Raffoni. And now the whole frightful truth had dawned upon the beautiful Magyar. She gazed despairingly at McNerney when he quickly said: "You can purchase your own safety; you can aid us now.
It was true that dark blue Russian violets, the starry forget-me-not, and the peerless lilies of the valley were therein hidden, but a keener emotion than expectant love shone in the young man's haggard eyes. He was anxiously gazing around for the now well known form of Madame Raffoni. Clayton dared not exhibit himself before the couple of hundred staring eyes upon the pavilion and broad porticos.
He forgot the absence of Einstein in his eager waiting for some intelligence of the woman whom he had shielded from the storm. Poor Madame Raffoni had mumbled some obscure words about "die herz-kranke." "Heartsick, my God! I am heartsick," cried Randall Clayton. "And, she may be alone; there may be no one to send."
Madame Raffoni was nodding in an alcove when the enraptured Randall Clayton caught the diva's hand. For he could not bear to lose her now; his heart clamored for her love. His kisses warmed its veined marble as he whispered, "I must see you again. We two are alone in the world. I owe you a return of your gallant hospitality."
"To the Irving Place Theater," ordered the impatient lover, and then the minutes seemed hours till he had paid off his man, and then, by Fourteenth Street, hastily entered the darkened hallway of the Restaurant Bavaria. He was but vaguely aware of the presence of Madame Raffoni, as he bowed low before his hostess. The incognito diva was a dream of beauty in her ravishing Viennese morning dress.
Kneeling by the bed, wherein he had deposited the senseless woman, Clayton chafed her marble hands in an agony of despair. But, even in his lover's exaltation, he listened to Madame Raffoni, who knelt before him in passionate adjuration. "Go, go!" she cried in broken pathos. "I will come to you to-morrow." And she dragged him to the door. "I will all do; everything! I swear! Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!"
"Fräulein Gluyas resides in Brooklyn?" he said, with a fine air of carelessness. Lilienthal's eyes swept obliquely the young man's distrustful face. "Fräulein Gluyas ordered the picture sent to the rooms of her music master, 192 Layte Street, Brooklyn. Poor old Raffoni was once a world-wide star, a velvet tenor. Now he is literally a voice maker, a master of technique for Maurice Grau.
When I can give her my whole life and a fortune," thought Clayton, "then I shall say, 'Irma, open the sealed books. There must be nothing hidden between us." With a serene confidence in Madame Raffoni, Randall Clayton always came home alone and by circuitous routes, artfully varied, from these strange trysts.
With one last despairing look, raining passionate kisses upon the marble lips of the woman he loved, Randall Clayton left the dusky magnificence of the superb apartment, and only halted at the door long enough to whisper to the Raffoni, "Bring me to her to-morrow, and I will make you rich!" And the poor woman dumbly covered his hands with obedient kisses. "Go, go!" she cried. "I will come!"
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