CHAPTER XIX WITHIN THE HOUR GLASS

As Petite Jeanne prepared to leave her room on the following evening for her third secret visit to the old Blackmoore, where she hoped once more to dance in Jimmie’s golden circle of light, she experienced a strange sensation. Events had been crowding in upon her. There was the strange gypsy, the fluttering of wings, the battle of Maxwell Street, the lost traveling bags. All these had, beyond doubt, exercised a powerful influence upon her. Be that as it may, she felt at that moment as if she were within a great funnel filled with sand. The sand was slipping, sliding, gliding downward toward a vortex and she, battling as she might, was slipping with it. And toward what an uncertain end!
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As she closed her eyes, however, she realized that this vision belonged to the remote past—her very earliest childhood. In those days, she faintly recalled, there had been in a room of some house where she lived, an hour glass. This hour glass was composed of two glass funnels whose very narrow tips were made to meet. One of these funnels had been filled with fine sand. Then the broad ends of each had been sealed.

When this hour glass was set down with the empty funnel at the bottom, the sand trickled slowly down from the upper one.

“I seem to be inside the full glass,” she told herself. “The sands of time are sinking and I am sinking with them. Struggle as I may, I sink, sink, sink!

“But perhaps,” she said with a little shudder, “the giant hand of Fate, passing by, will seize the glass and turn it end for end. Then the sand will begin trickling down upon my head.”

The thought did not please her, so, shaking herself free from it, she hastened down the stairs and caught a bus, and whirled away toward quite another world.
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As she closed her eyes once more for a moment’s rest, a second vision passed before her. A fleeting but very real vision it was, too—a marble falcon with a broken beak looking intently toward the sky. Then she recalled Merry’s words as they had parted on the previous evening: “Things are rather hard at times, but the falcon still looks up, so all will be well in the end.”

In spite of her efforts at self-control, Jeanne found her knees trembling as she entered Jimmie’s circle of light that night.

“For shame!” She stamped her dainty foot. “What is there to fear? The sound of wings. A bat perhaps, or a pigeon.”

Even as she said the words, she knew that she was lying to herself. There were no pigeons in the place. Pigeons leave marks. There were no marks. Bats there could not be, for bats pass on silent wings. Then, too, they snap their teeth.

“It is nothing,” she insisted stoutly, “and I shall dance to-night as never before!”

Jimmy was ready, later, to testify that she carried out this promise to herself.
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“Like some divine one,” was the way he expressed it. “I tell you,” he fairly stammered in his enthusiasm, “you could see her floating about like a ghost on that dark old stage!”

Once her feet began their tapping, Jeanne thought only of the Fire God and her art. Gone were thoughts of rushing wings and crashing glass, of darkness and the terror that lurks in the night.

Gone, too, was the shabby old playhouse with its dingy drapes and tarnished gilt. She seemed not there at all. In spirit she found herself beside a roadway at the edge of a pleasant village in France. It was springtime. The scent of apple blossoms was in the air. The dwarf pear trees that grew so close against the wall, were green with new leaves. The gypsies were about her, they and the country folk. Bihari was sawing at his violin. Jaquis was strumming a guitar and she was dancing bare-foot on the soft grass of spring, while the eyes of the Fire God gleamed softly upon her. It was all so like a dream that she wished it might last forever.
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Slowly there drifted into that dream a sound. At first she thought it was only a part of the dream, the clap of night hawks’ wings as they circled in the moonlight.

“But no!” Her face went white. “It is the wings, the fluttering of wings!” She almost cried aloud.

At the same instant she became conscious of some presence among the shadows that circled her on every side.

Panic seized her. She wanted to run away; yet she dared not. Close about her was Jimmie’s friendly circle of light. Beyond that was what? She dared not stir from that circle.

Suddenly her dancing ceased. Standing there alone in that sea of darkness, she stretched slim arms high, and cried:

“Jimmie! Jimmie! I’m terribly afraid! Don’t leave me! Please, please don’t let the light fade!”

Jimmie read real terror in her eyes, and in his honest devotion would have risked anything to save her from the unknown terror that lurked in the dark.
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But he was helpless for in an instant the place went black. He had not touched a switch, yet his light had blinked out. His head whirled. His trembling hand found a switch, threw it on. Still no light. Another and yet another.

“The house is dark! The wires are cut!” he told himself frantically.

Feeling his way along the aisle, he began stumbling down a stairway when to his startled ears there came a long drawn, piercing scream.

After that followed silence, silence such as only an empty playhouse holds in the dark night.

For a full minute he saw nothing, heard nothing. Then came a sound. Faint, yet very distinct it came, and appeared to cross the hall from end to end.

“Wings,” he murmured. “Just what she said. The flutter of wings!”