Shadows of Flames: A Novel

XXV

Loring's eyes were drawn to it unwillingly again and again. He marvelled that he did not remember it. He even wondered if that "little devil!" had not painted it herself upon the snow of her throat.

And whenever he looked at the soft, jet-black mole on the white throat, that kiss of two years ago flamed in his blood as it had not flamed at the time of its bestowal. But he was decent enough to be ashamed of this feeling. He answered Belinda rather briefly on the few occasions that she spoke to him. Somehow he did not trust her. Somehow (though this he did not acknowledge to himself) he dreaded her. And he glanced from her to Sophy—telling himself how much more really beautiful Sophy was in her soft grey and pearls than Belinda in her pansy purple and rococo necklace of amethysts and strass. But for the first time, against his will, Sophy's beauty struck him as cold. And yet it was not cold, though, within it, Sophy herself felt chill and numb. She, too, was obsessed by Belinda. It was not so much the girl's flaring good looks that obsessed her, but the thrilling, imperial youth of her. Sophy felt as a wilting, cut rose might feel, looking from its crystal vase upon a vigorous sister-blossom still rooted in the warm earth. It was a wretched sensation. Sophy hated herself for feeling it, and yet each time that she glanced at Belinda it swept over her afresh.

The dinner was rather flat. Only Mrs. Horton was in really good spirits. She was quite elated and happy over the idea of Belinda's going to stop with Sophy at Newport. Her "coming out" would be much "smarter" and more brilliant under Sophy's chaperonage than under poor, dear Grace's.

Belinda, for her part, was rather depressed by Sophy's appearance in the grey gown that filmed like smoke about her beautiful bare shoulders. Belinda had not taken in quite how lovely her rival was when she had first seen her that afternoon in plain white linen. And just as her youth troubled Sophy, so the mystery of experience in Sophy's dark-grey eyes troubled Belinda. She had a moment—one bitter, stinging moment—of feeling not quite so cock-sure about the future.

And Harold Grey, nervously eating far more than he wanted in his effort not to look too often at Belinda, was thinking how sure he was that his mother would pronounce her "not quite a lady," and yet how much more she attracted him than any of the most genuine "ladies" that he had ever seen. "Don't be an abandoned ass," he kept telling himself. "You're an infant's tutor with a fat salary paid you to keep your place. Now keep it—confound you!"

Loring knew that his mother had some old-fashioned prejudice against having champagne served every day for dinner, and as a rule he submitted, though grumblingly, while he was at Nahant. But to-night he felt that he must have the cheering beverage at all costs. Besides, his mother was ill in bed upstairs. Old Biggs looked like a disapproving, Methodistic owl when the order was given. It violated his principles as Mrs. Loring's butler of twenty years' standing, to serve champagne to a family party of five.

"I'm afraid it will hurt your mother's feelings, Morris," Sophy ventured, as Biggs left the room with a very rigid gait.

"Pooh! Why need she know? Such a silly notion, at any rate! And we ought to drink Linda's health—after her two years in foreign parts. You like champagne, don't you, Linda?"

"You bet!" said Belinda. She flashed both rows of teeth in pleased anticipation.

"Linda!" expostulated her mother, just as in old days. She turned appealingly to Sophy:

"Now I ask you what was the use of my sending her to an expensive Pension school in Paris for two years, if she comes back talking like this?"

"Oh, for God's sake, let her be natural, Aunt Nelly!" put in Loring. "If you only knew how refreshing it is to hear one's own lingo after six weeks or so of England!"

"Didn't you like England, Morry?" asked Belinda.

Loring grinned in the direction of Harold Grey.

"Mr. Grey's presence keeps me from answering with entire candour," he said, a veiled sneer in his voice. He disliked the presence of Bobby's tutor in his household extremely. Harold Grey was an acute young man. He realised this dislike on Loring's part, and returned it with vigour but discretion. He thought Bobby's step-father "just a bit of a cad." He now said composedly:

"Pray don't consider me."

But Loring replied: "Oh, there's plenty of time ahead! I'll give you my sentiments in private, Linda."

Belinda glanced from him to Sophy.

"But you like it, don't you?" she asked.

"Yes. I love England," Sophy answered quietly.

Harold Grey had a "cult" for his pupil's mother. He thought her very wonderful in every way. Now, when she said in that deep, sweet voice of hers that she "loved England," he felt that she was really to be worshipped. And he wondered for the many hundredth time, how she could have married that "gaudy cub." Dependence of position made Harold even harder on his employer than Lady Wychcote had been. But then he shrewdly guessed that it was really the wife and not the husband who employed him. He was already aware of the antagonism that existed between Loring and Bobby. "Breakers ahead there, I should say," he told himself.

At Sophy's reply to Belinda, Loring cast an irritated glance at her and said:

"Oh, Sophy's an out-and-out Anglo-maniac—quite rabid on the subject, in fact. You can't take her opinion. You wait till I talk to you, Linda!"

Neither the look nor the tone escaped Belinda. She also saw that Sophy winced from them—that colour stole into her face and that her lips tightened a little. Here was a useful sidelight. So Morry was as hotly American as ever! That was good. Then Sophy must jar on him at times; for Belinda had decided that she was not very American, not even very Southern. Belinda thanked her stars that she herself was so aggressively a daughter of Columbia.

"See how severe Sophy looks at my daring to jest on such a sacred subject," Loring continued. "By Gad! Sometimes I believe she wishes that we'd remained a Colony of Great Britain!"

("Blithering brute!... Can't you see she's only annoyed because you're jawing this way before me?" thought Harold Grey wrathfully.)

But the truth was, that Loring had never forgiven Sophy for the off-hand lesson read him by John Arundel. He half suspected that she had "put him up to it, by gad!" That visit to England had left a big bruise on his amour propre. And he "took it out" on Sophy now and then in some such way.

The champagne was served. Belinda's health was drunk. She finished that glass and began another.

"Be careful, Linda," cautioned her step-mother. "You're not used to wine, you know."

All Belinda's dimples began to play like a throng of elves.

"Oh, Mater!" she cried. She leaned forward and squeezed Mrs. Horton's dry, brown hand in her velvety white one. "You're too innocent and guileless to run loose in this wicked old world by yourself ... you really are!"

"What do you mean by that extraordinary speech, Linda?"

"Why ... as if the girls at the Pension didn't get bottles of fizz smuggled in to them, any old time! Why, whenever we had a spread on the sly, somebody's cousin, or brother, or mash slipped us a quart or so of champagne...."

Mrs. Horton looked really aghast. Loring roared. Harold Grey couldn't take his eyes off those twinkling dimples, but in his heart he said: "By Jove! She's a larky little baggage!"

Sophy was the only one who took it calmly. She had decided all of a sudden that there was a good deal of "bluff" about Belinda—that she was of the type that enjoys "shocking people." She said with a smile:

"I don't think you need look so horrified, Eleanor. I believe that Belinda is taking what she'd call 'a rise' out of us."

Belinda only laughed, but she was vexed that Sophy should have seen through her. She had not given her credit for such astuteness. The fact was, that she had never had so much as a sip of champagne while at Madame de Bruneton's excellent Pension. But she found this family meal very dull, she hated seeing Loring in the bosom of domesticity.

However, she won more by her impish tarradiddle than she had looked for. Morris turned to her with something of the old devilment in his eyes and said:

"By Jove, Linda, I hope it's not all bluff! I hope you are a good-enough little sport to enjoy a glass of wine. Good cheer loves company as well as Misery."

Belinda took it in like lightning. Sophy was one of the prigs who do not care to drink even in reason. Poor Morry!

She smiled at him, letting her eyes turn full on his for the first time.

"Of course I enjoy it!" she said. "I love the funny little 'razzle-dazzle' feeling it gives me! But the greatest part of the fun is drinking it with some one.... Some one you like, of course."

"By George, you're a little brick, Linda! Have some more...."

"No," said Belinda, still smiling, and putting her hand over her glass. "'Enough's' heaps better than a feast.... I like to sparkle, but I don't want to boil over...."

"Oh, Belinda! Belinda!" said her step-mother.

Sophy came to the rescue.

"An old negro said the best thing I've ever heard about the way that champagne makes one feel," she remarked lightly. "I gave him a glass one Christmas at Sweet-Waters. He'd never tasted champagne before, and I asked him if he liked it. He said: 'Laws, Miss Sophy—dat I does! I feels like I'se done hit dee funny-bones all over me!'"

While every one was laughing at this, she rose. Harold Grey excused himself to "write letters." "Good riddance!" Loring muttered to Belinda, as Harold disappeared and they followed Sophy and Mrs. Horton towards the drawing-room.

Loring was in his usual after-dinner state—not tipsy, but over-excited. He flashed a side-glance of appraisal. "You've bloomed into an out-and-out beauty, Linda. But I don't suppose you need me to tell you that."

"I think I rather do, Morry."

"Oh, cut it, Linda! Don't try the 'maiden-modesty' act on me.... You know as well as I do that you're a dazzler."

They had lingered by the front door, instead of going on into the drawing-room. A full moon was rising. As Belinda stood in the open doorway, one side of her face and figure was silver, and one golden from the hall lamps. She looked like a wonderful figure of mingled fires. In the strange illumination of her face, her eyes burned dark and full. She and Loring leaned against the opposite door-jambs, gazing at each other.

"I can't get over your being 'grown up,'" Morris said a little thickly, as she did not reply to his last remark.

"Yes ... I'm 'grown up,'" she said softly. She kept looking at him. Then she looked at the sea, then she looked back at him again. "It's nice ... being a woman," she added, still in that very soft voice.

"'Nice'?" asked Loring, with a short laugh. "You find it 'nice'?"

"Very nice," said Belinda.

She smiled suddenly. Her teeth glistened with a strange silvery lustre in the moonlight.

"Why?... Don't you?" she asked, her voice slightly shaken as by withheld laughter. It was going to be easier, after all, than she had thought. She did not realise that Bacchus had as much to do with it as Venus. She only knew that Morris was vibrating to her nearness, that his blood was trembling in him.

As he did not answer, she put out her hand and laid it lightly on his breast.

"Don't you?" she said again.

"Don't I what?" he asked rather crossly.

That hand was like a white flame to his drink-stirred blood.

"Oh, Morry!... What a fraud you are!..."

She laughed smotheredly like Lorelei through some soft, warm wave. "What an awful fraud you are, Morry!... You pay me compliments and all the time you're thinking what a nuisance it's going to be, having me at Newport this season!"

Loring looked at her oddly. Then he looked down at the white hand which still lay against his breast.

"Take your hand away, Linda!" he said curtly.

She took it away and turned it about before her in the moonlight, gazing at it consideringly.

"Poor little old hand!" she breathed pityingly. "You've offended the king...."

She held it up between them, again laughing.

"Must I cut it off?" she asked teasingly. "Will you cut it off for me and 'cast it into the fire'?"

Loring said nothing. He leaned there looking at her darkly. He hated her and desired her. It was the old emotion, under whose stress he had once kissed her, magnified tenfold.

She straightened suddenly and was close to him.

"Why are you so horrid to me, Morry?" she said, in a vehement whisper. "What have I done to vex you? I think it's cruel of you ... my first evening at home ... my first 'grown-up' evening with you...."

He saw her lips trembling. It made him quite breathless to see those full, rich lips trembling so near his.

"I don't mean to be horrid," he said constrainedly.

"But you are ... you are!..." she insisted. Her voice hummed with passion like a 'cello string. "You are!..." she repeated. "What have I done that you should order me not to touch you—as though my hand were poisonous?"

"I ... I'm nervous this evening...." he said lamely. He knew that he should have turned and gone forthwith into the drawing-room. He simply couldn't. The Purple Emperor aroma—the Belinda magic—held him thralled. Belinda wanted to fall forward on his breast and have her laugh out in the dark warmth of his embrace. But the time was not yet. Some day they would laugh together with love's wild, kiss-broken laughter over this comic interview. But not now.

"Are you sorry you were so horrid?" she murmured.

"Oh, yes ... naturally!..."

She had her velvety finger-tips against his mouth in a flash.

"Then kiss it ... beg its pardon!" she said.

Loring snatched down her hand and ground it between his.

"Linda! You little devil!... You little devil!..." he said.

He pushed her from him, then swung her to him violently. He loosed her hand and gripped her hard by both shoulders. This grip was brutal and painful. She found it delicious to be hurt by him. That was her type.

"Let me tell you ... let me tell you," he gasped, and this gasping voice also filled her with joy, "you'll play with fire once too often, my dear ... just once too often.... Burns don't make becoming scars.... Now leave me alone!"

He flung her off in good earnest this time, and strode away to the library. His pulses were racing—his blood pounding. He was scared. He did not mean to be false to Sophy for a worldful of Belindas. Not that his love for Sophy was what it had been. The old ardour was clean gone. He found her cold. He felt cold to her. Yet something in him clung blindly to what had been—to the revealed self in him that Sophy had once called forth.

XXVI

Perhaps for this reason they were particularly civil to each other. And Sophy had certainly been kindness itself about this ball and the girl's visit to her. She had even chosen her gown for the evening with reference to Belinda's. She was all in black and silver. She looked pale—not her best. Those warm, dusky stains were too marked under her eyes. She felt at ebb-tide. But Belinda was like a great, joyous, sunlit, inrushing wave.

"You are very beautiful in that gown, Belinda," Sophy said. "You look like sunlight."

"And you look like moonlight—on lilies," said Belinda, who could say very pretty things when she chose. Yet as she said it she was thinking how glad she was that she herself was red-rose rather than lily! How typically a splendid tiger-lily she seemed in her orange gown, she could not have imagined. The black mole on her throat was just like the mark on a tiger-lily leaf.

When Loring joined them, he said:

"What the deuce! You look like a mandarin orange in all that yellow, Linda!..." But his eyes said something else. Belinda was quite satisfied. When he added fretfully: "Why d'you stick that lump of jewels over one ear, like that? This isn't Turkey or Hindustan...." she was more pleased than ever. She knew that the hard glitter against her soft cheek allured him, and that his pettishness only meant that he didn't wish to be allured. But his reasoned wishes didn't matter in the least to her. It was the unreasoning, uncontrollable wish at the depths of his nature that she meant to call forth. "Love" she named this Wish. The pride of the eye and the lust of life seemed the true glories of being to Belinda. Her creed was simple. To love, to enjoy, to laugh with all the strength of one's body—these were the exhilarating ends of existence.

The ball went merrily. Belinda had the success that might easily have been predicted. In contrast with her, the other young girls seemed like pale-hued flowers on some tapestry at whose centre glows a rich blossom worked in gold. She danced and danced without getting dishevelled or red, or pale. She looked the embodied Joy of Living, as she swayed tirelessly, a faint, secret smile just parting her lips, her head thrown slightly back. And the young men with whom she danced seemed also washed out and inadequate beside her—very insufficient twigs to support the radiant, full-blown blossom of her beauty.

But as the evening wore on, though she still smiled, a little flame of anger and disappointment began to burn her heart. Morry was evidently hard-set against her. Not once had he asked her to dance. It was very shabby of him. It was cowardly. She knew very well that he was afraid of her. She loved his fear of her, but she hated this dull, "proper," tame resistance that wouldn't dare even one dance with her. Then suddenly her spirits leaped. There would be the Cotillion. He would have to dance with her some time during the Cotillion! Her opportunity came with the "Mirror figure." She sat on a little gilded chair in the middle of the ballroom, one gold-shot foot thrust out. She was more than ever like Lorelei, as she sat there with the little silver mirror in her hand, coolly touching her tossed hair into place, while she waited for the swains to kneel foolishly before her.

Sophy, who had not danced this evening, stood near a doorway watching her. To her, the girl in her apricot draperies, looking at herself in the silver glass with such perfect disinvolture, seemed suddenly like a beautiful Falsehood who had stolen Truth's mirror and was trying to see what it revealed. For somehow, as she had watched her during the evening, the intuitive conviction had come to her that Belinda was very false. And yet Belinda was perfectly true—to herself. What to Sophy would have seemed falseness, would have seemed to Belinda "being true to herself." She really thought it "being true to herself" to take Morris for herself, if she could, by any means within the limits of conventional propriety and at any cost to any one—but herself and, within reason, him.

Young men by the score came and knelt at the golden shoes of Belinda. She sent them all away, with the most charming effrontery. Then Sophy saw Loring approach. He looked pale and sulky.

She watched the two curiously. It seemed as if Belinda were going to flout Morris also. But all at once she laughed, and pressed the mirror against his upturned face. It was an odd gesture—almost like a caress. Sophy thought that it displeased her because of something in it that she could only characterise as "bad form." The next moment, she saw Morris pull the girl rather roughly up into his arms, and waltz off with her.

A woman standing near by said spontaneously: "What a beautiful couple they make!"

Yes. Sophy saw that, too. They were really quite wonderful floating about to the sensuous rhythm in each other's arms. And all at once the thought flashed to her: "How well they suit each other in every way!" She stood gazing after them—singling them out from the whirling throng. And her thought returned to her, enlarged, more distinct: "He ought to have married her ... not me." The more she watched them, the more this thought possessed her. Belinda would not have bored him with ideals. Belinda would not have been bored herself by the "social stunt" as exacted in New York and Newport. Belinda would have found that visit to England "bully fun." She would have joined with him in "poking up the highbrows." Nor would Belinda have objected to wine-bred love—of this, somehow, Sophy felt particularly sure. Yes; in all things they would have been fittingly mated. In age, in taste, in habits, in temperament.

Just here Loring himself passed by her on his way out of the room. The waltz was over. He walked rapidly like a man towards some object. His face was white and set and his eyes black. Sophy could not know that he was drunk, not with wine but with Belinda. She slipped out into the hall after him. Only some servants were standing about—not near them. She detained him an instant, her hand on his arm. "Morris—don't be vexed...." she said very low. "But don't take any more—just this evening. Your cousin's first ball...."

He flung off her hand. His face worked. "For God's sake, go your way," he said, in a violent whisper, "and let me go mine! I'm tired of squatting on the steps of the temple. Let up on me, for God's sake! I don't interfere with you!..."

He was gone. And obeying a very natural if reprehensible impulse, he drank a glass more of champagne than he had intended to before Sophy spoke.

She turned and went quietly back towards the ballroom. To-morrow she would think things out more clearly. Certainly they could not continue as they were now. She had not meant to "nag." Yet she had nagged. Sophy had rare largenesses in her. She was neither as hurt nor as angered by Loring's words as most women would have been. She had reached that very chill room in Love's House, where it is easy to put one's self in another's place.

"But I can't go on like this ... not all my life," she thought wearily. Yet she saw no way out. The thought of divorce never occurred to her. She hated divorce as she hated other vulgarities. Yet, illogically enough, this view of the matter was only applied to her own case. She heartily and thoroughly approved of it for others. She even thought that marriage should be a civil contract, dissolvable by the mutual consent of both parties, or by the resolution even of one.

A woman of whom she was rather fond—Helen Van Raalt—spoke to her suddenly, touching her shoulder from behind.

"Sophy, dear, I'm dreadfully sorry to be so late! I had to take May to Fanny's party first, you know. And we've only just got away. And I've brought an old friend of yours along with me—my cousin—Marco Amaldi...."

XXVII

Then had come the news of Sophy's marriage to Loring. Amaldi had had another bitter recrudescence of feeling over that. He was filled with a contemptuous anger against himself for what seemed to him a poor-spirited fidelity. He was nothing, had never been anything to this woman who spread devastation through his life. He had always despised the love that starves on in faithful submission. He would on every occasion have altered where he alteration found, and bent with the remover to remove—only he discovered that it was not in his power to do so. This emotion which had seized him without his volition or consent, proved stronger than his will. Even though he succeeded in curbing it, though it lay in chains, as it were, in the profundity of his being—yet it stirred and threatened at the idea of any other love. It was like a jealous, ill-governed prisoner who will not share his cell.

This one, supreme flame had burned out in Amaldi all capacity for loving any other woman.

As the years passed, however, a calmer temper rose in him. Reflecting on those early days of his love for Sophy, he realised that he had demanded much while offering little—that he had been unreasonable in expecting her to love him under the circumstances. Why, indeed, he asked himself one day, four years after he had parted from her so stormily—why truly should she have loved him? His whole effort at that time had been to repress himself. He had never been truly himself when with her, so much of his will had been absorbed in trying to restrain his passion. He had been silent, reserved, conventional. Yet he had expected her to return a feeling, whose depth and intensity she could not possibly have realised. Now for the second time she was the wife of another man....

No reasoning, no philosophy, no lapse of time could save Amaldi from crisping in the furnace of this thought.

But when, two years afterwards, his agricultural interests made a journey to America seem necessary, he faced the probability of meeting her again with tolerable coolness. He was nearing forty and he considered life a discipline to be endured with hardihood. His character had deepened and strengthened.

The Marchesa, in daily contact with him, found a dear companion, though his habit of long silences seemed to increase with growing years. To his inmost self she never attained. She did not know whether any chord of his former passion for Sophy still vibrated. He never alluded to her.

The situation in regard to his wife was just the same. When the Marchesa looked at her son's fine, sensitive dark face, grown stronger for controlled pain, and realised that in all likelihood no compensation would ever come to him, she felt that incomparable bitterness with which we watch the suffering of one for whom we would gladly die.

She might die for Marco ten times over, yet he would never really live. "Two women have seen to that," she told herself bitterly. Yet in her more rational moods she did not blame Sophy. She had known her too intimately to blame her. No—that Marco had loved her was not Sophy's fault. There had been in his love for her that inevitability which characterises true passion as well as true poetry.

And Sophy, standing now with her hand in Amaldi's after all these years, had at first no thoughts that could properly be called thoughts,—the memory of the three windows in the room where she had first met him—of how it had seemed to mean something, and yet had meant nothing, like all else in her life....

Then with a shock that "brought her to," as it were, she recalled how she and Amaldi had parted from each other six years ago, and the colour welled into her face.

He knew what she was thinking of. He, too, was thinking of it.

Mrs. Van Raalt was chattering again. "Just think what an odd thing Marco's been doing in America!... He's been all over the West studying the system of agriculture. Isn't that the funniest way for an Italian to spend his time in America?"

"But you've been in America before, haven't you?" said Sophy mechanically.

She was thinking what an air of race Amaldi had, and how quiet and strong he looked standing there against the whirling, parti-coloured background of the ball. Somehow she did not remember in him this powerful look of manhood. Then she realised—he was more a man. Those six intervening years had given him this new look.

"Oh, yes," he said, answering her question. "Twice. Once when I was a boy—once about nine years ago. My mother gave me many messages for you, Signora—'tanti auguri'...."

The Italian words swept Sophy back, and she paled again. This and the mention of his mother brought so vividly the memory of Cecil's death.

"Please give her my love ... when you write...." she said, her voice a little shaken. (Helen Van Raalt had turned away with some one.) "I shall never forget her kindness to me...." she added. As if she felt her words too formal, she repeated: "I shall never, never forget all her kindness to me...."

"She will be very happy to get such a message from you," said Amaldi. He, too, felt his tone to be formal. Yet what could there be between them but formalities! His heart shook in his breast. He had been mad, quite mad—a vain fool, to risk seeing her again. He had even thought that to see her thus, married for the second time, and happily, would allay the uneasy ache with which he always thought of her. He realised, in these very first moments, that it was the contrary which had happened. That half-numbed ache had sprung into a throb of acute pain at the first sight of her face. And how delicate she looked! Then leaped the question: Was she only ill ... or was she unhappy?

This thought of her possible unhappiness had not before occurred to Amaldi. That a woman with such bitter experience to guide her should make a second mistake in a question so vital as marriage had not seemed possible. Now as he observed her it seemed quite possible ... even probable. It took his breath. He felt that he must look strange and so began to speak casually. After a few moments Sophy said: "I must introduce you to some of these pretty girls.... They will be thinking me very negligent."

He followed her submissively. He had come to this débutante ball just for the opportunity of seeing her. Now he must pay the penalty.

Sophy led him first to Belinda.

"Belinda, this is my friend, the Marchese Amaldi," she said. "This is the heroine of the ball, Marchese ... Miss Horton, my...." she almost stumbled—"my husband's cousin," it came out bravely.

Belinda thought that Amaldi looked "a great swell." She set herself at once to enthrall him. Amaldi lent himself idly to the old, old game. Belinda had at times the stupidity of all cock-sureness. She went to bed that night firmly convinced that Amaldi was her future slave.

She said something of the sort jestingly to Sophy. Sophy looked at her gravely, then she coloured a little and said:

"I must tell you Belinda that the Marchese Amaldi is married. He is separated from his wife—but in Italy there is no divorce."

"Pooh!" said Belinda airily. "I don't want to be his marchioness.... I only want to see how a stately dago like that makes love...."

Sophy had not replied. And Belinda, safe in her bedroom, taking off her jewels with little pussy-cat yawns of replete pleasure, had thought:

"He must have been in love with her once ... when she was younger. Just common or garden jealousy—her telling me that!"

Then she looked at a little red mark on her white arm, and forgot all about Amaldi and Sophy. She lifted her arm and rubbed her cheek softly to and fro over the mark. It had been left there by a violent kiss.

"Oh, Morry ... Morry...." she purred, caressing her own arm where he had caressed it, full of voluptuous reminiscence. "As if I care whether all the dagoes in the world have as many wives as Bluebeard!— My Jove ... my darling!"

And she kissed and kissed the little red seal of love on her arm that was white like peeled almonds.

XXVIII

Amaldi had winced from the beauty of that face, as he had winced from Sophy's look of fragility. He had not the superficial scorn for male beauty which is felt by the average Anglo-Saxon. He did not fall into the common error of thinking that women are indifferent to beauty in men. On the contrary, he knew that some women are as much affected by it as men are by the beauty of women.

He looked at the perfect Greek type of Loring's face, enhanced by the intense pallor that over-stimulation always lent it, and he knew (being a Latin) the terrific spell that such a face can cast over the imagination.

At that moment, so strong is the fleshly man in even the most highly evolved being, he could have wished that she had loved a monster for his soul, rather than this stripling for his beauty. The power of vivid visualisation is one of a Latin's chief tortures when unrequited love mocks him. Amaldi could see the beauty of Sophy and Loring in each other's arms as plainly as though they had stood enlaced before him.

He had said good-night rather abruptly.

As he walked off along the terrace, Belinda had asked scampishly of Loring:

"Well, Morry, what d'you think of my dago mash?"

"I don't think of him," had been the surly retort.

"Well, I do. I think he's a peach. He's simply stunning to look at anyhow. So dark and sort of holding his breath at one. A marquis, too, let me tell you. Don't you think I'd make a nice marchioness?"

"For God's sake, don't play the fool with me, Linda."

She pouted.

"You won't let me play the fool with you! That's why I'm going to see if I can with my handsome dago."

Loring's reply to this had been to seize her by one arm and jerk her to her feet before him.

"My bracelet! You hurt me...." she had murmured. He released her arm, and she stood nursing it against her breast, thrusting out her red lips over it, saying, "There! there!" to it as if it had been a baby.

"I don't believe I hurt it an atom.... Let me see," he had demanded. She made him furious—furious with desire and detestation. He loathed her roguery and wiles, yet they mastered him just as drink did.

"Let me see," he said again, putting out his hand towards her arm.

She yielded it to him with a languid movement, so that it hung a warm, white weight in his grasp.

"There...." she said, pressing her forefinger into the soft flesh.

It was then that he had set that violent kiss upon it. His lips clung, drew at the delicate, supple texture. The girl leaned against him half swooning with the delight of his hot lips upon the coolness of her bare arm.

She didn't care in the least when, coming to himself again, he flung away her arm as though it had been a bit of trash.

"Go to bed," he had said roughly between his teeth. "Go to bed and say your prayers ... you need 'em...."

She had stood laughing softly, as he strode off after Amaldi, towards the house. She didn't mind his rudenesses because she knew of old that reaction was sure to follow. He was too good-tempered and easy-going in his normal state to keep up this savage mood with her. He was only cross like this when he'd "had too much." And the more brutal he was at such times, the more apt he was to make up for it by being "nice" afterwards. She had had some experience of these moods in him even as a schoolgirl.

In fact, the next day Loring, rather ashamed of the hazy memory that he retained of that scene on the terrace, was very "nice" to her indeed. He proposed a ride together. This was the beginning of delightful rides alone with him.

Sophy had given up both riding and dancing for the past two or three weeks. The truth was that she had not felt very well of late. The constant, hopeless sense of defeat, of a wearing situation from which she could see no means of extricating herself, had begun to affect her body. This sensation of physical weariness was new to her. Always, until now, her strong, elastic physique had resisted triumphantly. But nowadays she felt jaded. Everything seemed an effort. Her grey eyes, which Amaldi remembered so brilliantly eager, had that subdued, waiting look which comes from either physical or mental suffering constantly endured. Which of these causes brought that look into her eyes, he felt that he must know. He could not bear it that her eyes should have that look in them. What was wrong? Was it her health or was it that a second time she had made the mistake most terrible of all to a woman such as she was? In that case....

Amaldi faced himself squarely. There was no escaping the truth of what he had brought upon himself by his own act. It had needed but that one sight of her, that one touch of her hand to rouse in him the old love, as much stronger for the lapse of years as was his manhood. And now ... what? There was no danger of his repeating his mistake of six years ago. A great love always, sooner or later, brings humility—the proud humility expressed in the fine old Latin phrase of the Romish ritual—"whom to serve is to be a King." To serve her in her need, Amaldi felt, would confer kinghood of spirit.

"If she is unhappy ... if love has failed her this second time ... if she has no love left to give me ... even in years to come ... why, then, at least I can be her friend...." thought Amaldi.

He had reached this "Station" in the Via Crucis of love. He looked back, wondering, on the man he had been as contrasted with the man he now was. Had any one told him at thirty that he would some day feel towards a woman as he now felt towards Sophy, he would have smiled. Yet, within a decade he had come to know by experience that the intense, sublimated passion of the Vita Nuova is no exaggeration.

Those who maintain that Beatrice was for Dante merely a symbol of Divine and Abstract love, cannot realise the miraculous power of metamorphosis inherent in a supreme, human love withheld from its natural expression.

Love of this kind is clairvoyant and clairaudient. Though he could not yet discern causes clearly, Amaldi could both see and hear the shadowy presences that followed Sophy in those days. The one stared with the eyes of a virgin at her broken cestus, the other plained softly: "Vanity of vanities ... all is vanity." Why this was, he did not know, but that it was, he knew certainly. He set himself to watch, with the watchfulness of the "Loyal serviteur."

Within the next day or two he called about tea-time as Sophy had asked him to. He found her having tea on the sea-lawn with Bobby and his tutor. Bobby made friends with him at once.

Then shortly Loring and Belinda came in from a ride. It amused Amaldi that Belinda appropriated him at once. This Attitude of hers suited him very well. He could see Sophy often in this way, while being considered "le flirt" of Miss Horton. He would also have opportunities of observing Loring in his own home. This, just at present, was what he most desired. He wished to find out what sort of man was behind the persona of that beautiful mask. Now as he responded with discretion to Belinda's rather familiar chaffing, he thought that Loring's glance was slightly hostile. He sat sipping a cup of tea in silence, looking at them every now and then over its brim.

Belinda thought it "bully fun" to flirt with Amaldi "under Morry's very nose." What a dog in the manger Morry was! He hadn't the courage to claim her himself, yet he glowered and sulked because another man responded to her bewitchment.

Sophy wondered what impression Amaldi was really receiving. She could not help thinking that the fencing between them was much as if Belinda wielded a bludgeon and Amaldi a rapier. And as this thought came to her, she winced, remembering that horrible time when she had seen Amaldi himself use a stick as a sword.

It was Loring's attitude throughout the scene that chiefly impressed Amaldi. "It is not possible...." he kept saying to himself. "No ... it's impossible...."

But the more he noticed those sullen, lowering glances of Loring in their direction, the more he felt that what he declared "impossible" was a fact.

Was that, then, the secret of Sophy's tired, subdued eyes? Did she still love that handsome, sulky boy, while he turned from her to this obvious young seductress? Amaldi felt hot with pain and anger at the mere surmise. Yet the situation was most likely. And if it were so, Belinda was "playing him off" to rouse the other's jealousy. "Little minx!" thought Amaldi in English. It made him furious to think that she might be using him in this way in the very presence of the woman he adored.

He went away some moments later with a troubled spirit. What could friendship avail here? He had not realised that part of his high mood had come from the conjecture that Sophy no longer loved the man she had married. What had he or "friendship" to do in a galère already weighted to the water-line with love and jealousy? Hope is so inevitably one with love, even the love that has decided on the stony path of "friendship." He had hoped ... what had he hoped? Down the long vista of years—what was it that he had glimpsed at the far end, as one glimpses sunlight at the end of a long, dark tunnel? He sat far into the night thinking—brooding.

But day brought counsel. He decided that he had jumped to premature conclusions. He determined to pursue the course that he had at first planned. At least, in this way, he would arrive at the truth. Now he only fumbled with conjecture. The first thing must be to win Sophy to a feeling of confidence in their renewed relations.

And very exquisitely, by fine indirection, he put her at her ease with him—conveyed the impression that time had done its work-a-day task of sobering passionate emotion into tranquil esteem.

Life had dealt rather harshly with them both. They had both grasped Illusion—flower of Maya—and been stung by the serpent coiled beneath. But a friendship such as this was not illusion. It wore no veils—its speech was plain and sober—it went clad in honest homespun. Had not Amaldi himself once told her that he was not a sentimentalist? This honest, daylight feeling that had now sprung up between them had in it no sentimentality. She did not want sentiment. She wanted this that Amaldi gave her—communion and stimulus, clear and bracing as a day of her Virginian autumn. It was so long—so unbelievably long—since she had talked pleasantly with a man who was interested in the things that she found interesting. And they would sit often, over the tea-table on the sea-lawn, before the others came in from driving or riding, exchanging ideas on philosophy and religion and poetry and art. She asked Amaldi about his everyday life. He replied smiling that he had become as ardent an agriculturist as Cavour had once been. Sophy did not know about this phase in the great statesman's career. She was deeply interested. It came out that Amaldi had been asked to give some lectures on the "Risorgimento" that coming winter at Columbia University. The idea rather pleased him, he said. He thought of taking Cavour as his chief subject.

Sophy kindled at the idea. It made her own problems and disappointments seem insignificant to think of the gigantic odds with which that great being contended all his life, and to selfless ends.

"How worth while it all was—his struggle and his Victory!" she cried.

Her eyes dilated—grew brilliant as he remembered them in other days.

"Yes," said Amaldi, "he really merged his private self in the self of humanity. Buddha was not more a Buddhist in that respect than Cavour was."

"And you will stay here this winter, and tell America something of him?"

"I think so ... yes."

It solved for him the riddle of being longer near her without causing comment.

"Ah," said Sophy, "that will be something to look forward to."

She was utterly unaware of how much this sentence and the tone in which she said it revealed to Amaldi.

There was, then, an emptiness in her life. But the more that Amaldi realised the sort of existence she now led, the more he felt convinced that even love could not have compensated her for such surroundings. He knew her latest book of poems almost by heart. Their exaltation of spirit had made him feel when he read them that he had offered his hot, human love to one of those women who are by nature Vestals.

He, too, had been stirred by that cry, "I am the Wind's, and the Wind is mine." But with him it had been the cold thrill of appeased jealousy. "No mortal lover" would possess what had been denied him. There was a bleak joy in this thought. Then had come the news of her second marriage.

But in this marriage he now felt that both the poet and the woman suffered.

XXIX

Sophy noticed this restraint and a faint hope sprang in her heart. She felt a sort of sad, maternal yearning over Morris—sad, because the part of mother-wife was but a melancholy one to take, after having played Selene to his Endymion. She would have got near him if she could. But he slammed the door of his heart in her face. What we have ceased to worship we resent, when it is still a part of our daily existence.

Loring resented Sophy's "superiority" as much as he had once adored it. He blamed it upon her that Belinda was for him "l'échanson de l'amour," the "janua diaboli" of the ancient church. If a wife repulsed her husband, then she need not wonder when he went elsewhere. It was plainly her fault. Wives should be mirrors—they should reflect moods—all moods. The woman who locked out her lawful husband, for such a high-flown reason as that he had taken a "bit too much," deserved to have him blown away from her on the four winds of desire. What was marriage for, if not to bind wives to their duties?

But while Loring had grown blasé in his passion for Sophy, his vanity in the "ownership" of her was still keen. And also, in the depths of him, he loved her, though with a flat, habituated sort of affection. All zest had gone out of it. This was why her refusals angered without piquing him. This was why he feared Belinda. His nature craved ever new toys, and Belinda was a gorgeously tempting toy. Yet he knew well that she was pinchbeck compared with Sophy. He had no idea of exchanging the real thing for the imitation.

He did not mean to give Sophy any serious cause for resentment. Indeed he was a little in dread of both women. He could not guess exactly what either would do if too much exasperated. His feeling for Sophy was a good deal that of the Collector for a unique jewel which he cannot wear, but which gives him a standing with other Collectors. His feeling for Belinda, that of an epicure who longs for a dainty that he knows will disagree with him. But he was rather fond of Belinda in spite of hating her cordially at times. He found her a congenial pal. He liked her dare-deviltry when it was not directed against himself. His will and Belinda's at this time represented the impenetrable wall and the irresistible ball of the old hypothesis.

And now the little demon chose to madden him by "carrying on" with that "dago."... Loring was horribly jealous of Amaldi.

He and Belinda were both very careful when in Sophy's presence. Quick as she usually was in "feeling" things, the common little drama passed unnoticed by her; so much of it was played "off stage," in the wings. And her nature was singularly free from suspicion.

Undoubtedly also, the amour propre natural to a beautiful woman who has been much loved, blinded her. It simply did not occur to her that Morris could be in love with Belinda. And to Amaldi it never occurred that Sophy could be blind to what in his eyes was so plainly evident. He only marvelled at her self-control, and raged futilely at the humiliation to which she was subjected. It cut him to the quick that she should care for a cad who "made love" in secret to a wanton girl under her very roof.

Now, however, Mrs. Horton had come to Newport for a few days. Surely she, as the girl's mother, would take steps in the matter, which Sophy's pride had prevented her from taking.

But to Amaldi's intense amazement, Belinda's mother seemed quite unaware of anything unusual. It was on the third day after her arrival that a most extraordinary scene took place. The afternoon was misty. Tea was served indoors instead of on the lawn. As usual Belinda and Loring came in from a long ride together.

Belinda still kept up an intermittent coquetry with Amaldi, though he did not meet her with the complaisance of those first days. Italians particularly object to being used as cat's-paws, even by a pretty woman. And in this instance Amaldi's natural aversion from serving such a purpose was increased by his resentment on behalf of Sophy.

Belinda was very wroth with Morris this afternoon. He had chosen to tell her, just now, with the brutality of self-defense driven to its limits, that Sophy's "little finger was worth a shipload of her" (Belinda). She determined to punish him. She dropped into a low chair near Amaldi, and leaned forward, chin in hand, her lambent, impish eyes on his.

"Come sta, Amaldi?" she said. "I haven't seen you for a month of Sundays. You're really much better looking than I remembered."

"Accept my humble gratitude," replied Amaldi with ironic exaggeration.

She blinked her eyes slowly, pondering this remark. She thought his dryness the result of her neglect of him for the past week. Poor dear! He was jealous of Morry. Well, now Morry should be jealous of him.

"What's on that ring?" she asked suddenly. "I hate men to wear rings as a rule—but that dark blue is ripping on your hand. I suppose you know you've got dandy hands?"

"You overwhelm me," said Amaldi as before.

"Not much I don't! I know your jeering way.... But I think you'd be rather interesting to overwhelm all the same ... to really overwhelm, I mean."

"But I assure you that is my state at present."

"Pooh!" said Belinda, laughing. She drew her chair a little closer. "Come, you haven't told me what's on your ring."

"My stemma—the coat-of-arms of my family."

He did not offer to show her the ring. She bent nearer, gazing at it.

"What's the motto?" she asked, her face close to his hand.

"'Che prendo—tengo,'" said Amaldi.

"And what does it mean?"'

"'What I take—I keep.'"

"I believe you!" she exclaimed boldly. She flashed her eyes to his. "You look as if you'd know how to keep what you chose to take. You've got such a very 'Don't-monkey-with-the-buzz-saw' air about you. It rather fascinates me...."

"You raise me to vertiginous heights," said Amaldi in the same tone.

"Oh, come off!" retorted Belinda with her joyous grin.

Sophy was talking with Mrs. Horton and paid no attention to this murmured dialogue, but Loring's eyes were fixed angrily upon them, as he sat smoking on one of the cushioned window-sills.

All at once Belinda put out her hand and touched the sapphire that Amaldi wore—then held up her finger.

"Lend it to me...." she said. "I've fallen in love with it."

Amaldi flushed. The ring had been his mother's. She had put it on his finger herself the day that he was twenty.

"Well?" laughed Belinda. "What are you afraid of? I'm not proposing to you.... I shan't steal it...."

There was no other course left him. Amaldi drew off the ring in silence and held it towards her. He did not offer to put it on her finger.

"'Fraid-cat!" she mocked. She snatched it from him and slipped it on herself. The ring that had fitted Amaldi's little finger fitted her third finger perfectly.

She gazed delighted at the carved sapphire against her white, velvety skin. Then she jumped up and danced away, holding up her hand before her, and chanting:

"'What I take—I keep!' 'What I take—I keep!'— You'll whistle long and loud before you get this beauty back, Amaldi!"

Amaldi was rather pale, but smiling. He said nothing. Mrs. Horton called sharply:

"What on earth are you about, Linda?— What are you making such a noise for?"

"Oh, nothing ... just a little game I've been playing with Amaldi."

"Well do be quieter ... you're really too noisy."

She went back to her talk with Sophy. But though Sophy listened, her eyes followed Belinda.

Loring got down from his seat on the window-sill, and sauntered forward. He met Belinda in the middle of the room.

"Go and give that ring back," he said in a low voice.

"Not much!" laughed Belinda.

"Yes, you will."

"You think so?"

"I know so."

"You'll make me, I suppose?"

"Yes— I will."

"Pouf! Just try it...."

She pirouetted insolently, and he caught her by one arm. Then began a most astonishing scuffle. Belinda escaped, and rushed to the farthest end of the room. Morris bounded after her—caught her again. She turned and twisted in his grasp. Her red-brown mane came down; she struck at him, tried to bite his hand where it gripped her.

Amaldi sat like an image watching this, to him, appalling game of romps. His face was as expressionless as a Chinaman's. He thought he had never looked on a cruder exhibition of sex-provocation. He thought his ears deceived him when he heard Mrs. Horton exclaim:

"Did you ever see such a pair of children! Linda! Morry! You'll break something... Do behave! Can't you make Morry behave, Sophy?... Oh, dear! What do you mean by behaving like this, Linda?"

Amaldi thought this question most unnecessary. He thought Belinda's meaning only too painfully lucid. He was astounded to hear Sophy's sweet, natural laughter.

"Morris!" she called. "Belinda! You really shouldn't romp like this before Amaldi. He'll think you're demented...."

("'Demented!'" thought Amaldi.)

For the first time it dawned on him that perhaps Sophy did not take in the situation after all. Then he glanced at Belinda, panting, flushed, bacchante-like, in the grip of the white-faced, angry-eyed man who was trying to drag the ring from her finger. No! It was impossible. The others must see a thing so flagrant, so palpable. But Mrs. Horton continued to exclaim helplessly at intervals:

"Oh, what children! What babies!"

While Sophy merely sat resigned, waiting for the hurricane to subside.

Loring conquered, of course. He strode up to Amaldi and dropped the ring into his hand, while Belinda sank down on a distant sofa, gasping out:

"You're a brute, Morry!... I hate you!"

Loring gave a short laugh, and strolled out of the room.

Amaldi also took his leave in a frame of mind that may be described as bewildered.