Ragna. Anna Miller Costantini
enjoyment of the passing hour.
The sun was nearing the horizon as they went below to prepare for dinner. A few light clouds flecked the sky, looking like the fleeces of wandering lambs.
"It will be a perfect evening," said Mirko, "and we shall have a full moon."
Ragna put on the same frock she had worn the evening before—it was her best—but to-night she turned it in a little more at the neck and bosom, and pinned on a piece of lace given her by her mother when she left home. Her skin showed white in the opening and her delicate throat rose from its frame like the stalk of a flower.
The Captain came to the saloon for dinner and sat at the head of the table, having Prince Mirko on his right and Angelescu on his left; Ragna sat by the Prince. All had good appetites and did full justice to the excellent fare provided.
The Prince had given orders that champagne be served from the very beginning and he made it his care to replenish Ragna's glass as often as she emptied it.
Captain Petersen, busy with his dinner and in entertaining his distinguished passengers to the best of his ability, noticed nothing, but Angelescu's eyes were grave as he observed the girl's flushed cheeks, and unnaturally bright eyes. He even ventured so far as to ask her whether she were fond of champagne, to which she answered innocently that she liked it very much but had never drunk much wine of any kind whatever.
Captain Petersen broke in with his genial roar. "So you like the champagne, Fröken Ragna? So do I! So do I! Not but what a little 'schnapps' in season, has its merits—still I suppose champagne is better for a young lady than 'schnapps'!"
Angelescu relapsed into silence; if the captain, who was, in a way the girl's guardian, saw nothing amiss, he himself would do no more. To do the Prince justice, he had no thought of making his neighbour take more than was good for her; he had no intention of doing her the slightest harm; he wished to give her pleasure and at the same time to enjoy himself. If in filling her glass he wore a slight air of bravado it was that Angelescu's evident distrust of him and his intentions had stirred up a certain obstinacy within him, and he was possessed by the desire to outrage the would be protector's feelings. Mirko had shrewdly guessed that Angelescu entertained a warmer regard for Ragna than he was willing to admit of to himself; that the assumption of the protector's role might not be wholly the disinterested or rather uninterested attitude that the Count wished it to appear, as that, when at the close of dinner Ragna went to her cabin for a wrap, he drew Angelescu aside and said to him:
"I wish you to understand once and for all, Otto, that I will not tolerate your interference and your silent criticism. It is all very well for you to think that because you are older than I, and because we have always been comrades you have the right to control me. I am your Prince, and you will do well to remember the fact."
Angelescu, his face burning, cut to the quick, saluted and answered stiffly.
"Your Highness shall be obeyed," then turned on his heel; but Mirko called him back, already regretting the sharpness of his tone and language towards his old playmate and faithful friend.
"Hold on, old man, don't take it like that! I didn't mean what I said, at least not all. You seem to think me a sort of villain in disguise, and you arrogate to yourself the responsibility for my conduct in every direction. You sat at table glaring at me as if I were trying to poison Mademoiselle. Now what is the matter with you?"
"I thought that Your Highness did not realize the fact that she is only a child and quite unused to champagne—"
"Did you not hear the Captain?"
"The Captain is a rough old sailor, unused to young girls; I thought—"
"You think too much, Otto. Besides, it's rather new for you to play the part of 'Squire of Dames' to wandering damsels—I believe the root of the matter is that you are in love with the girl, yourself. Why don't you marry her? You could, you know."
"Your Highness knows very well that I am not free to marry," said Angelescu in a low voice, a dark flush spreading over his face. The Prince knew well, as did everyone else, that his aide was bound, and had been for years, to a married woman of high rank, whose unhappy married life had been responsible for the forming of the liaison, and that now time and custom and a quixotic sense of moral obligation continued to bind the unfortunate Angelescu to the lady's chariot wheels, though any feeling he had had for her was long since dead.
Ragna's entrance put a stop to further explanations, and Angelescu excused himself, saying that he must attend to the neglected writing of the afternoon. So the other two were left with the deck to themselves.
It was a perfect evening, the full moon hung low in an almost cloudless sky and the broad silver pathway over the water looked like a carpet laid for a procession of fairies. Ragna hung over the rail in an ecstasy of appreciative joy.
"Oh, isn't it just like Heaven!" she murmured.
"I can't say," answered Mirko, "never having been there, but it would make a good setting for a love scene. Imagine it for a honeymoon!"
"I must answer like Your Highness," laughed Ragna, "never having had a honeymoon I can't very well imagine one."
"Then look at the lovers in the moon."
"Lovers in the moon!"
"What! have you never seen them?"
"I see only the hare, with his two long ears."
"Look again, the lady is on the right, and you see her head in profile, her lover has a beard—there, do you see?"
"No," said Ragna, "I still do not see."
"That is because your eyes have not been opened; when you have had a lover, you will see the Lovers in the moon."
Ragna laughed at the idea.
"Why should having a lover improve one's eyesight?" she asked.
"It will not improve your physical eyes, Mademoiselle, but it will open your spiritual eyes to the world; just now your heart is blind."
To this Ragna found no answer; she stood silent, her face turned up to the moon, still looking vainly for the Lovers. Mirko stood gazing at her tempted by her fairness, her simplicity, and the moonlight.
"Do you realize the delightfulness of this episode?" he asked her abruptly. "It will be like an oasis in the desert to look back on. I should like you to forget this evening, that we are anything but just our two selves; there is no Prince, there is no Fröken Andersen, we are just you and I and nothing more. Yesterday we met, to-morrow we part, probably for ever, so that there can be no thought of past or future to embarrass us. There is no yesterday and no to-morrow, no time and no limitation of space; we are all the world, we are quite alone and detached from everything, you and I and the moon!"
His eyes were fastened on hers and held them; she could not have moved away had she wished.
She answered in an embarrassed way:
"You wish to stop the hands of the clock for this evening?"
"Exactly—with your help."
The romance of the situation appealed to her.
"The clock has stopped," she announced gravely.
"Thank you," he murmured raising her hand to his lips.
Ragna laughed uneasily; it seemed to her that she was living in some fairy tale.
The Prince led her to a deck chair and drew up another beside it. From where they sat they could see the moon and the light upon the water, but they were screened from the companion-way door, and indeed from most of the deck, by the ventilator of the saloon and the shadow of a life-boat. It was unusually warm for the North Sea, especially for so early in the season, and Ragna found her heavy cloak oppressive.
"Take care you do not get cold," said the Prince as he helped her to loosen the clasp at the neck. The whiteness of her throat seemed like marble in the moonlight. Her hook had caught