Read Online The Green Muse by Jessie Prichard Hunter - Free Book Online Page A

mock me,” she said, but she smiled too.
    â€œWill you meet me? Tomorrow, at the Morgue.” It was stupid and unsuitable; but I could hardly control myself.
    She turned her head. “Sir,” she said coldly, “I do not know you.”
    â€œBut you do.” I took her arm, perhaps roughly.
    â€œYou will release me,” she said.
    â€œWhat would you drink, I wonder?” Anything, to keep her from looking away. “Brandy, cut with a syrup of currants?”
    â€œRum,” she said abruptly, “hot, with butter.” I laughed to cover my discomfort.
    Why was she not frightened?
    At any rate she had not moved.
    â€œWill you dine with me?” I ventured. She was on the verge of pulling away. Her eyes went catlike as she considered me. And we stood, in the rain, and I offered my arm.
    â€œWill you consent to have a drink with me?”
    â€œSo long as you do not attempt to take my arm again,” she said without the slightest coquetry, “and you allow me to choose the bar.”
    I was disappointed. I’d had in mind a little bistro with a certain genteel decadence, one where a woman’s fragile morals might perhaps be weakened without her reputation being besmirched. But I said only, “Of course I will accompany you wherever you please, but the wind is strong, and the cobblestones uneven.”
    â€œI have walked in the rain before,” she said lightly, “and I am familiar with the cobblestones of Paris.”
    How sweet her voice was, how lilting! And yet how subtly insinuating that statement, I am familiar with the cobblestones of Paris.
    â€œI will not touch you,” I said. I knew that I was lying.
    â€œHow came you to this spot tonight?” she asked as we walked, I a clod-­footed mortal to her water sprite.
    â€œI was looking for you.” And it was only then that I realized that it was, in fact, the truth.
    Ah. She was silent a moment. It seemed I was capable of surprising her.
    â€œI come to that spot on the river often,” she said, “to think. To dream, really, about my day. About all that I have seen and heard. As though I cannot feel it all as it is happening but must reflect upon it, once I am to myself, to understand all that I have seen and experienced.”
    I did not know the neighborhood. The streets were well lit but almost empty.
    â€œDo you experience so much during a single day?”
    â€œOh, yes!” How like a child she was; how wise. “There are infinite pleasures in the course of a day. I could think for an hour just on the expression on that dead girl’s face at the Morgue today—­and I spent an hour contemplating the rain on the surface of the river while I awaited your arrival. Shall we have our drink and some dinner now?”
    I was as surprised to find ourselves in front of a small eatery as I was by her statement about awaiting me. She spoke in such a carefree manner that she seemed almost not to be the girl from the Morgue at all. And yet I knew that this was a role that she had chosen for the night. Because she had known, I was certain of it, although how I cannot say. And perhaps I had really known how to find her. Destiny drawing itself to itself, it might have been that. Love drawing love. Death drawing death.
    The café was not so brightly lit as it had seemed from the outside; that had been a trick of the night and the rain. We walked down ancient stone steps through a medieval door into a low-­ceilinged room whose front windows let in no outside light at all. The candles in the wall sconces were not fresh, and a few of them were guttering as though there were a wind. The café was so narrow that there was room only on the right side for booths, which were deep and a dark velvet green. The brick walls were old; the entire place had a feeling of floating somehow outside of ordinary time and space. The whole outside world fell away from me, and when I turned to my