"I am trying to be unselfishly honest with you to see how it feels. First—about my loving anybody. I never have; I have on several occasions been prepared to bestow heart and hand—been capable of doing it—and something happened every time. On one of these receptive occasions the thing that happened put me permanently out of business. I'll tell you about that later.
"What I want to say is that the reason I don't love you is not because I can't, but because I won't! You don't understand that. Let me try to explain. I've always had the capacity for really loving some woman. I was more or less lonely and shy as a child and had few playmates—very few girls of my age. I adored those I knew—but—well, I was not considered to be a very desirable playmate by those parents who knew the Malcourt history.
"One family was nice to me—some of them. I usually cared a great deal for anybody who was nice to me.
"The point of all this biography is that I'm usually somewhat absurdly touched by the friendship of an attractive woman of my own sort—or, rather, of the sort I might have been. That is my attitude toward you; you are amiable to me; I like you.
"Now, why am I not in love with you? I've told you that it's because I will not let myself be in love with you. Why?
"Dear—it's just because you have been nice to me. Do you understand? No, you don't. Then—to go back to what I spoke of—I am not free to marry. I am married. Now you know. And there's no way out of it that I can see.
"If I were in love with you I'd simply take you. I am only your friend—and I can't do you that injury. Curious, isn't it, how such a blackguard as I am can be so fastidious!
"But that's the truth. And that, too, may explain a number of other matters.
"So you see how it is, dear. The world is full of a number of things. One of them signs himself your friend,
"LOUIS MALCOURT."
Virginia's eyes remained on the written page long after she had finished reading. They closed once or twice, opened again, blue-green, expressionless. Looking aloft after a while she tried to comprehend that the sky was still overhead; but it seemed to be a tricky, unsteady, unfamiliar sky, wavering, crawling across space like the wrinkled sea beneath it. Confused, she turned, peering about; the beach, too, was becoming unstable; and, through the sudden rushing darkness that obscured things, she tried to rise, then dropped full length along the sand.
A few seconds later—or perhaps minutes, or perhaps hours—she found herself seated perfectly conscious, mechanically drying the sea-water from her wet face; while beside her knelt a red-capped figure in wet bathing-dress, both hands brimming with sea-water which ran slowly between the delicate fingers and fell, sparkling.
"Do you feel better?" asked Shiela gently.
"Yes," she said, perfectly conscious and vaguely surprised. Presently she looked down at her skirts, groped about, turned, searching with outstretched fingers. Then her eyes fell on the letter. It lay on the sand beside her sunshade, carefully weighted with a shell.
Neither she nor the girl beside her spoke. Virginia adjusted her hat and veil, sat motionless for a few moments, then picked up the water-stained letter and, rolling it, placed it in her wet glove. A slow flame burned in her pallid cheeks; her eyes remained downcast.
Shiela said with quick sympathy: "I never fainted in my life. Is it painful?"
"No—it's only rather horrid.... I had been walking in the sun. It is very hot on the beach, I think; don't you?"
"Very," said the girl gravely.
Virginia, head still bent, was touching her wet lace waist with her wetter gloves.
"It was very good of you," she said, in a low voice—"and quite stupid of me."
Shiela straightened to her full height and stood gravely watching the sea-water trickle from her joined palms. When the last shining drop had fallen she looked questioningly at Miss Suydam.
"I'm a little tired, that is all," said Virginia. She rose rather unsteadily and took advantage of Shiela's firm young arm, which, as they progressed, finally slipped around Miss Suydam's waist.
Very slowly they crossed the burning sands together, scarcely exchanging a word until they reached the Cardross pavilion.
"If you'll wait until I have my shower I'll take you back in my chair," said Shiela. "Come into my own dressing-room; there's a lounge."
Virginia, white and haggard, seated herself, leaning back languidly against the wall and closing her heavy eyes. They opened again when Shiela came back from the shower, knotting in the girdle of her snowy bath-robe, and seated herself while her maid unloosed the thick hair and rubbed it till the brown-gold lustre came out like little gleams of sunlight, and the ends of the burnished tresses crisped and curled up on the smooth shoulders of snow and rose.
Virginia's lips began to quiver; she was fairly flinching now under the pitiless contrast, fascinated yet shrinking from the splendid young creature before her, resting there aglow in all the vigourous beauty of untainted health.
And from the mirror reflected, the clear eyes smiled back at her, seeming to sear her very soul with their untarnished loveliness.
"Suppose you come and lunch with me?" said Shiela. "I happen to be quite alone. My maid is very glad to do anything for you. Will you come?"
"Yes," said Virginia faintly.
An hour later they had luncheon together in the jasmine arbour; and after that Virginia lay in the hammock under the orange-trees, very still, very tired, glad of the silence, and of the soft cool hand which covered hers so lightly, and, at rare intervals, pressed hers more lightly still.
Shiela, elbow on knee, one arm across the hammock's edge, chin cupped in her other palm, sat staring at vacancy beside the hammock where Virginia lay. And sometimes her partly doubled fingers indented her red lower lip, sometimes they half framed the oval face, as she sat lost in thought beside the hammock where Virginia lay so pale and still.
Musing there in the dappled light, already linked together by that subtle sympathy which lies in silence and in a common need of it, they scarcely stirred save when Shiela's fingers closed almost imperceptibly on Virginia's hand, and Virginia's eyelids quivered in vague response.
In youth, sadness and silence are near akin. That was the only kinship they could claim—this slim, pale scion of a worn-out line, and the nameless, parentless girl beside her. This kinship was their only bond—unadmitted, uncomprehended by themselves; kinship in love, and the sadness of it; in love, and the loneliness of it; love—and the long hours of waiting; night, and the tears of it.
The sun hung low behind the scented orange grove before Virginia moved, laying her thin cheek on Shiela's hand.
"Did you see—that letter—in the sand?" she whispered.
"Yes."
"The writing—you knew it?... Answer me, Shiela."
"Yes, I knew it."
Virginia lay very still for a while, then covered her face with both hands.
"Oh, my dear, my dear!" breathed Shiela, bending close beside her.
Virginia lay motionless for a moment, then uncovered her face.
"It is strange," she said, in a colourless, almost inaudible voice. "You see I am simply helpless—dependent on your mercy.... Because a woman does not faint over—nothing."
The deep distress in Shiela's eyes held her silent for a space. She looked back at her, then her brooding gaze shifted to the laden branches overhead, to the leafy vistas beyond, to the ground where the golden fruit lay burning in the red, level rays of the western sun.
"I did not know he was married," she said vacantly.
Swift anger burned in Shiela's cheeks.
"He was a coward not to tell you—"
"He was honourable about it," said Virginia, in the same monotonous voice. "Do you think I am shameless to admit it? Perhaps I am, but it is fairer to him. As you know this much, you should know the truth. And the truth is that he has never said he loved me."
Her face had become pinched and ghastly, but her mouth never quivered under this final humiliation.
"Did you ever look upon a more brazen and defenceless woman—" she began—and then very quietly and tearlessly broke down in Shiela's tender arms, face hidden on the young girl's breast.
And Shiela's heart responded passionately; but all she could find to say was: "Dear—I know—indeed, indeed I know—believe me I know and understand!" And all she could do was to gather the humbled woman into her arms until, her grief dry-spent, Virginia raised her head and looked at Shiela with strange, quenched, tearless eyes.
"We women are very helpless, very ignorant," she said, "even the worst of us. And I doubt if in all our lives we are capable of the harm that one man refrains from doing for an hour.... And that, I think, is our only compensation.... What theirs may be I do not know.... Dear, I am perfectly able to go, now.... I think I see your mother coming."
They walked together to the terrace where Mrs. Cardross had just arrived in the motor; and Shiela, herself shaken, wondered at the serene poise with which Virginia sustained ten minutes of commonplaces and then made her final adieux, saying that she was leaving on the morning train.
"May we not see each other in town?" she added amiably; and, to Shiela: "You will let me know when you come North? I shall miss you until you come."
Mrs. Cardross sent her back in the motor, a trifle surprised at any intimacy between Shiela and Virginia. She asked a frank question or two and then retired to write to Mrs. Carrick, who, uneasy, had at last gone North to find out what financial troubles were keeping both her husband and her father so long away from this southland that they loved so well.
Hamil, who was to leave for the North with his aunt and Virginia early next morning, returned from the forest about sundown, reeking as usual of the saddle, and rested a moment against the terrace balustrade watching Mrs. Cardross and Shiela over their tea.
"That boy is actually ill," said the sympathetic matron. "Why don't you give him some tea, Shiela? Or would you rather have a little wine and a biscuit, Garret—?"
"And a few pills," added Shiela gravely. "I found a box of odds and ends—powders, pills, tablets, which he might as well finish—"
"Shiela! Garret is ill!"
Hamil, busy with his Madeira and biscuit, laughed. He could not realise he was on the eve of leaving, nor could Shiela.
"Never," said he to the anxious lady, "have I felt better in my life; and I'm sure it is due to your medicines. It's all very well for Shiela to laugh at quinine; mosquitoes don't sting her. But I'd probably be an item in one of those phosphate beds by this time if you hadn't taken care of me."
Shiela laughed; Hamil in excellent humour went off to dress. Everybody seemed to be in particularly good spirits that evening, but later, after dinner, Gray spoke complainingly of the continued absence of his father.
"As for Acton Carrick, he's the limit," added Gray disgustedly. "He hasn't been here this winter except for a day or two, and then he took the train from Miami straight through to New York. I say, Hamil, you'll look him up and write us about him, won't you?"
Shiela looked at Hamil.
"Do you understand anything about financial troubles?" she asked in a bantering voice.
"I've had some experience with my own," he said.
"Well, then, what is the matter with the market?"
"Shall I whisper it?"
"If you are prepared to rhyme it. I dare you!"
It was the rule of the house that anybody was privileged to whisper at table provided they put what they had to communicate into rhyme.
So he thought busily a moment, then leaned over very gravely and whispered close to her ear:
When money's high the market's low;
When money's low the market's right,
And speculators sleep at night.
But, dear, there is another mart,
Where ticks the ticker called my heart;
And there exhaustless funds await,
To back my bankrupt trust in Fate;
For you will find, as I have found,
The old, old logic yet is sound,
And love still makes the world go round."
"I always knew it," said Shiela contemptuously.
"Knew what, dear?" asked her mother, amused.
"That Mr. Hamil writes those sickening mottoes for Christmas crackers."
"There are pretty ones in them—sometimes," said Cecile, reminiscently spearing a big red strawberry which resembled the popular and conventional conception of a fat human heart.
Gray, still serious, said: "Unless we are outside of the danger zone I think father ought to teach me something about business."
"If we blow up," observed Cecile, "I'll do clever monologues and support everybody. I'd like that. And Shiela already writes poetry—"
"Nonsense!" said Shiela, very pink.
"Shiela! You do!"
"I did in school—" turning pinker under Hamil's tormenting gaze.
"And you do yet! I found an attempt on the floor—in your flowing penmanship," continued the pitiless younger sister. "What is there to blush about? Of course Phil and I were not low enough to read it, but I'll bet it was about somebody we all know! Do you want to bet—Garry?"
"Cecile!" said her mother mildly.
"Yes, mother—I forgot that I'm not allowed to bet, but if I was—"
Shiela, exasperated, looked at her mother, who shook her head and rose from the table, taking Hamil's arm.
"You little imp!" breathed Shiela fiercely to Cecile, "if you plague me again I'll inform Mr. Hamil of what happened to you this morning."
"I don't care; Garry is part of the family," retorted Cecile, flushed but defiant and not exactly daring to add: "or will be soon." Then she put both arms around Shiela, and holding her imprisoned:
"Are you in love?—you darling!" she whispered persuasively. "Oh, don't commit yourself if you feel that way!... And, O Shiela, you should have seen Phil Gatewood following me in love-smitten hops when I wouldn't listen! My dear, the creature managed to plant both feet on my gown as I fled, and the parquet is so slippery and the gown so flimsy and, oh, there was a dreadful ripping sound and we both went down—"
Shiela was laughing now, holding her sister's gesticulating hands, as she rattled on excitedly:
"I got to my feet in a blaze of fury, holding my gown on with both hands—"
"Cissy!"
"And he gave one horror-stricken look and ran—"
Swaying there together in the deserted dining-room, they gave way to uncontrolled laughter. Laughter rang out from the living-room, too, where Gray was informing Mrs. Cardross and Hamil of the untoward climax to a spring-time wooing; and when Shiela and Cecile came in the latter looked suspiciously at Hamil, requesting to know the reason of his mirth.
"Somebody will have to whisper it to you in rhyme," said Hamil; "it's not fit for prose, Cissy."
Mrs. Cardross retired early. Gray went for a spin in his motor. Cecile, mischievously persuaded that Hamil desired to have Shiela to himself for half an hour, stifled her yawns and bedward inclinations and remained primly near them until Gray returned.
Then the four played innocuous Bridge whist until Cecile's yawns could no longer be disguised; and finally Gray rose in disgust when she ignored the heart-convention and led him an unlovely spade.
"How many kinds of a chump can you be in one day?" asked her wrathful brother.
"Pons longa, vita brevis," observed Hamil, intensely amused. "Don't sit on her, Gray."
"O dear! O dear!" said Cecile calmly, "I'd rather be stepped on again than sat on like that!"
"You're a sweet little thing anyway," said Hamil, "even if you do fall down in Bridge as well as otherwise—"
"Shiela! You told Garret!"
"Cunning child," said Hamil; "make her dance the baby-dance, Shiela!" And he and her sister and brother seized her unwilling hands and compelled her to turn round and round, while they chanted in unison:
Falling down,
Falling down,
Cissy's gown is falling down,
My
Fair
Lady!"
"Garry, stop it!... It's only an excuse to hold Shiela's hand—"
But Shiela recited very gravely:
Hunting up our money;
Philip's in the music-room,
Calling Cis his honey;
Cissy's sprinting through the hall,
Trying to be funny—"
"I won't dance!" cried Cecile. But they sang insultingly:
Philip will slop!
Cissy is angry,
For Philip won't stop."
Something will fall,
Down will come petticoat, Cissy, and all!"
"O Garry, how can you!"
"Because you've been too gay lately; you're marked for discipline, young lady!"
"Who told you? Shiela?—and it was my newest, dearest, duck of a gown!... The situation was perfectly horrid, too. What elephants men are!"
"You know, I'd accept him if I were you—just to teach him the value of gowns," suggested Hamil.
But Shiela said seriously: "Phil Gatewood is a nice boy. We all knew that he was going to ask you. You acted like a ninny, Cis."
"With my gown half off!—what would you have done?" demanded the girl hotly.
"Destroyed him," admitted Shiela, "in one way or another, dear. And now I am going to bed—if everybody has had enough of Cissy's Bridge—"
"Me for the hay," observed Gray emphatically.
So they all went up the stairway together, lingering a few moments on the landing to say good night.
Cecile retired first, bewailing the humiliation of not having a maid of her own and requesting Shiela to send hers as she was too sleepy to undress.
Gray caught sight of a moth fluttering around the electric lights and made considerable noise securing the specimen. After which he also retired, cyanide jar containing the victim tucked under his arm.
CHAPTER XVIII
PERIL
Shelia, standing by the lamplit table and resting one slim hand on the edge of it, waited for Hamil to give the signal for separation.
Instead he said: "Are you really sleepy?"
"No."
"Then—"
"I dare not—to-night."
"For any particular reason?"
"For a thousand.... One is that I simply can't believe you are really going North to-morrow. Why do you?" She had asked it nearly a thousand times.
"I've got to begin Portlaw's park; and, besides, my work here is over—"
"Is that all you care about me? Oh, you are truly like the real Ulysses:
Fall crackling round him, and the forests groan!"
Do you remember, in the Odyssey, when poor Calypso begs him to remain?
'This shows thee, friend, by old experience taught,
And learn'd in all the wiles of human thought,
How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
Thus wilt thou leave me? Are we thus to part?
Is Portlaw's Park the passion of thy heart?'"
Laughing, he answered in the Grecian verse:
'Tis mine to master with a constant mind;
Inured to peril, to the worst resigned,
Still I can suffer; their high will be done."
From the soft oval of her face the smile faded, but her voice was still carelessly gay:
"And so he went away. But, concerning his nymph, Calypso, further Homer sayeth not. Yet—in the immortal verse it chanced to be he, not she, who was—married.... And I think I'll retire now—if you have nothing more agreeable to say to me—"
"I have; in the garden—"
"No, I dare not risk it to-night. The guards are about—"
"It is my last night here—"
"We will see each other very soon in New York. And I'll be up in the morning to drive you to the station—"
"But, Shiela, dear—"
"There was a bad nigger hanging around the groves last night and our patrols are out.... No, it's too risky. Besides—"
"Besides—what?"
"I've been thinking."
He said, tenderly impatient:
"You little witch of Ogygia, come into the patio then, and do your thinking and let me make love to you."
But she would not raise her eyes, standing there in the rose lamplight, the perverse smile still edging her lips.
"Calypso," he repeated persuasively.
"No.... Besides, I have nothing to offer you, Ulysses.... You remember what the real Calypso offered the real Ulysses if he'd remain with her in Ogygia?"
"Eternal youth and love?" He bent over the table, moving his hand to cover hers where it rested in the lamplight. "You have given me eternity in love already," he said.
"Have I?" But she would not lift her eyes.... "Then why make love to me if you have it ready-made for you?"
"Will you come?"
And she, quoting the Odyssey again:
Swear by the solemn oath that binds the gods!"
And in turn he quoted:
Forgive the weakness of a human heart."
But she said with gay audacity, "I have nothing to forgive you—yet."
"Are you challenging me? Because I am likely to take you into my arms at any moment if you are."
"Not here—Garry!"—looking up in quick concern, for his recklessness at times dismayed her. Considering him doubtfully she made up her mind that she was safe, and her little chin went up in defiance.
"The hammock's in the patio," he said.
"There's moonlight there, too. No, thank you—with Cissy wakeful and her windows commanding every nook!... Besides—as I told you, I've been thinking."
"And what have you concluded?"
Delicate straight nose in the air, eyebrows arched in airy disdain, she stood preoccupied with some little inward train of thought that alternately made grave and gay the upcurled corners of her lips.
"About this question of—ah—love-making—" dropping her eyes in pretence of humility.
"It is no longer a question, you know."
She would not look up; her lashes seemed to rest on the bloom of the rounded cheek as though the lids were shut, but there came from the shadows between the lids a faint glimmer; and he thought of that first day when from her lifted gaze a thousand gay little demons seemed to laugh at him.
"I've been thinking," she remarked, "that this question of making love to me should be seriously discussed."
"That's what I've been asking you to do in the patio—"
"I've been thinking, with deep but rather tardy concern, that it is not the best policy for me to be—courted—any more."
She glanced up; her entire expression had suddenly altered to a gravity unmistakable.
"What has happened?" he asked.
"Can you tell me? I ask you, Garry, what has happened?"
"I don't understand—"
"Nor I.... Because that little fool you kissed—so many, many centuries ago—is not this disillusioned woman who is standing here!... May I be a little bit serious with you?"
"Of course," he said, amused; "come out on the east balcony and tell me what troubles you."
She considered him, smilingly suspicious of his alacrity.
"I don't think we had better go to the balcony." "Shiela, can't you ever get over being ashamed when I make love to you?"
"I don't want to get over it, Garry."
"Are you still afraid to let me love you?"
Her mouth curved gravely as a perplexed child's; she looked down at the table where his sun-burnt hand now lay lightly across hers.
"I wished to speak to you about myself—if, somehow you could help me to say what—what is very difficult for a girl to say to a man—even when she loves him.... I don't think I can say it, but I'll try."
"Then if you'll come to the balcony—"
"No, I can't trust you—or myself—unless we promise each other."
"Have I got to do that again?"
"Yes, if I am to go with you. I promise! Do you?"
"If I must," he said with very bad grace—so ungraciously in fact that as they passed from the eastern corridor on to the Spanish balcony she forgot her own promise and slipped her hand into his in half-humourous, half-tender propitiation.
"Are you going to be disagreeable to me, Garry?"
"You darling!" he said; and, laughing, yet secretly dismayed at her own perversion, she hurriedly untwisted her fingers from his and made a new and fervid promise to replace the one just broken.
The moonlight was magnificent, silvering forest, dune, and chaparral. Far to the east a thin straight gleam revealed the sea.
She seated herself under the wall, lying back against it; he lay extended on the marble shelf beside her, studying the moonlight on her face.
"What was it you had to tell me, Shiela? Remember I am going in the morning."
"I've turned cowardly; I cannot tell you.... Perhaps later.... Look at the Seminole moon, Garry. They have such a pretty name for it in March—Tau-sau-tchusi—'Little Spring Moon'! And in May they call it the 'Mulberry Moon'—Kee-hassi, and in November it is a charming name—Hee-wu-li—'Falling Leaf Moon'!—and August is Hyothlucco—'Big Ripening Moon.' ... Garry, this moonlight is filling my veins with quicksilver. I feel very restless, very heathenish." ... She cast a slanting side-glance at him, lips parting with soundless laughter; and in the witchery of the moon she seemed exquisitely unreal, head tipped back, slender throat and shoulders snow-white in the magic lustre that enveloped them.
Resting one bare arm on the marble she turned, chin on shoulder, looking mischievously down at him, lovely, fresh, perfect as the Cherokee roses that spread their creamy, flawless beauty across the wall behind her.
Imperceptibly her expression changed to soft friendliness, to tenderness, to a hint of deeper emotion; and her lids drooped a little, then opened gravely under the quick caress of his eyes; and very gently she moved her head from side to side as reminder and refusal.
"Another man's wife," she said deliberately.... "Thy neighbour's wife.... That's what we've done!"
Like a cut of a whip her words brought him upright to confront her, his blood tingling on the quick edge of anger.
For always, deep within him, lay that impotent anger latent; always his ignorance of this man haunted him like the aftermath of an ugly dream. But of the man himself she had never spoken since that first day in the wilderness. And then she had not named him.
Her face had grown very serious, but her eyes remained unfathomable under his angry gaze.
"Is there any reason to raise that spectre between us?" he demanded.
"Dear, has it ever been laid?" she asked sorrowfully.
The muscles in his cheeks tightened and his eyes narrowed unpleasantly. Only the one feature saved the man from sullen commonness in his suppressed anger—and that was his boyish mouth, clean, sweet, nobly moulded, giving the lie to the baffled brutality gleaming in the eyes. And the spark died out as it had come, subdued, extinguished when he could no longer sustain the quiet surprise of her regard.
"How very, very young you are after all," she said gently. "Come nearer. Lift your sulky, wicked head. Now ask my pardon for not understanding."
"I ask it.... But when you speak of him—"
"Hush. He is only a shadow to you—scarcely more to me. He must remain so. Do you not understand that I wish him to remain a shadow to you—a thing without substance—without a name?"
He bent his head, nodding almost imperceptibly.
"Garry?"
He looked up in response.
"There is something else—if I could only say it.... I might if you would close your eyes." ... She hesitated, half-fearful, then drew his head down on her knees, daintily, using her finger-tips only in the operation.
"Are you listening to what I am trying to tell you?"
"Yes, very intently."
"Then—it's about my being afraid—of love.... Are you listening?... It is very difficult for me to say this.... It is about my being afraid.... I used to be when I did not know enough to be. And now, Garry, when I am less ignorant than I was—when I have divined enough of my unknown self to be afraid—dearest, I am not."
She bent gently above the boyish head lying face downward on her knees—waited timidly for some response, touched his hair.
"I am listening," he nodded.
She said: "My will to deny you, my courage to control myself seem to be waning. I love you so; and it is becoming so much worse, such a blind, unreasoning love.... And—do you think it will grow so much worse that I could be capable of anything ignoble? Do you think I might be mad enough to beg my freedom? I—I don't know where it is leading me, dear. Do you? It is that which bewilders me—that I should love you so—that I should not be afraid to love you so.... Hush, dear! Don't speak—for I shall never be able to tell you this if you speak, or look at me. And I want to ask you a question. May I? And will you keep your eyes covered?"
"Yes."
"Then—there are memories which burn my cheeks—hush!—I do not regret them.... Only, what am I changing into that I am capable of forgetting—everything—in the happiness of consenting to things I never dreamed of—like this"—bending and laying her lips softly against his cheek.... "That was wrong; it ought to frighten me. But it does not."
He turned, looking up into the flushed young face and drew it closer till their cheeks touched.
"Don't look at me! Why do you let me drift like this? It is madness—to give up to each other the way we do—"
"I wish we could give up the world for each other."
"I wish so too. I would—except for the others. Do you suppose I'd hesitate if it were not for them?"
They looked at each other with a new and subtler audacity.
"You see," she said with a wistful smile, "this is not Shiela Cardross who sits here smiling into those brown eyes of yours. I think I died before you ever saw me; and out of the sea and the mist that day some changeling crept into your boat for your soul's undoing. Do you remember in Ingoldsby—'The cidevant daughter of the old Plantagenet line '?"
They laughed like children.
"Do you think our love-tempted souls are in any peril?" he asked lightly.
The question arrested her mirth so suddenly that he thought she must have misunderstood.
"What is it, Shiela?" he inquired, surprised.
"Garry—will you tell me something—if you can?... Then, what does it mean, the saying—'souls lost through love'? Does it mean what we have done?—because I am married? Would people think our souls lost—if they knew?"
"No, you blessed child!"
"Well, how can—"
"It's a lie anyway," he said. "Nothing is lost through love. It is something very different they mean."
"Yes," she said calmly, "something quite inconceivable, like 'Faust' and 'The Scarlet Letter,' ... I thought that was what they meant!"
Brooding over him, silent, pensive, clear eyes fearlessly meeting his, she drifted into guiltless retrospection.
"After all," she said, "except for letting everybody know that we belong to each other this is practically like marriage. Look at that honeymoon up there, Garry.... If, somehow, they could think we are engaged, and would let us alone for the rest of our lives, it would not matter.... Except I should like to have a house alone with you."
And she stooped, resting her cheek lightly against his, eyes vaguely sweet in the moonlight.
"I love you so," she murmured, as though to herself, "and there seems no end to it. It is such a hopeless sequence when yesterday's love becomes to-day's adoration and to-morrow's worship. What am I to do? What is the use of saying I am not free to love you, when I do?" She smiled dreamily. "I was silly enough to think it impossible once. Do you remember?"
"You darling!" he whispered, adoring her innocence. Then as he lay, head cradled on her knees, looking up at her, all unbidden, a vision of the future in its sharp-cut ominous desolation flashed into his vision—the world without her!—the endless stretch of time—youth with no meaning, effort wasted, attainment without desire, loneliness, arid, terrible days unending.
"It is too—too senseless!" he breathed, stumbling to his feet as the vague, scarcely formulated horror of it suddenly turned keen and bit into him as he began to realise for the first time something of what it threatened.
"What is it, Garry?" she asked in gentle concern, as he stood looking darkly at her. "Is it time to go? You are tired, I know." She rose and opened the great glass doors. "You poor tired boy," she whispered, waiting for him. And as he did not stir: "What is the matter, Garry?"
"Nothing. I am trying to understand that our winter is ended."
She nodded. "Mother and Gray and Cecile and I go North in April.... I wish we might stay through May—that is, if you—" She looked at him in silent consternation. "Where will you be!"
He said in a sullen voice: "That is what I was thinking of—our separation.... Do you realise that it is almost here?"
"No," she said faintly, "I cannot."
He moved forward, opening the glass doors wider; she laid one hand on his arm as though to guide herself; but the eastern corridors were bright with moonlight, every corner illuminated.
They were very silent until they turned into the south corridor and reached her door; and there he suddenly gave way to his passionate resentment, breaking out like a spoiled boy:
"Shiela, I tell you it's going to be unendurable! There must be some way out, some chance for us.... I don't mean to ask you to do what is—what you consider dishonourable. You wouldn't do it anyway, whether or not I asked you—"
"But don't ask me," she said, turning very white. "I don't know what I am capable of if I should ever see you suffer!"
"You couldn't do it!" he repeated; "it isn't in you to take your happiness at their expense, is it? You say you know how they would feel; I don't. But if you're asking for an annulment—"
"What? Do you mean divorce?"
"No.... That is—different—"
"But what—"
"You dear," he said, suddenly gentle, "you have never been a—wife; and you don't know it."
"Garry, are you mad?"
"Shiela, dear, some day will you very quietly ask some woman the difference between divorce and annulment?"
"Y-yes, if you wish.... Is it something you mayn't tell me, Garry?"
"Yes.... I don't know! You sometimes make me feel as though I could tell you anything.... Of course I couldn't ... you darling!" He stepped nearer. "You are so good and sweet, so utterly beyond evil, or the vaguest thought of it—"
"Garry—I am not! And you know it!"
He only laughed at her.
"You don't think I am a horrid sort of saint, do you?"
"No, not the horrid sort—"
"Garry! How can you say such things when I'm half ready now to run away with you!"
The sudden hint of fire in her face and voice, and something new in her eyes, sobered him.
"Now do you know what I am?" she said, breathing unevenly and watching him. "Only one thing keeps me respectable. I'd go with you; I'd live in rags to be with you. I ask nothing in the world or of the world except you. You could make me what you pleased, mould me—mar me, I believe—and I would be the happiest woman who ever loved. That is your saint!"
Flushed with her swift emotion, she stood a minute facing him, then laid her hand on the door knob behind her, still looking him in the eyes. Behind her the door slowly swung open under the pressure.
His own self-control was fast going; he dared not trust himself to speak lest he break down and beg for the only chance that her loyalty to others forbade her to take. But the new and deeper emotion which she had betrayed had awakened the ever-kindling impatience in him, and now, afire, he stood looking desperately on all he must for ever lose, till the suffering seemed unendurable in the checked violence of his revolt.
"Good night," she whispered sorrowfully, as the shadow deepened on his altered face.
"Are you going!"
"Yes.... And, somehow I feel that perhaps it is better not to—kiss me to-night. When I see you—this way—Garry, I could find it in me to do anything—almost.... Good night."
Watching him, she waited in silence for a while, then turned slowly and lighted the tiny night-lamp on the table beside her bed.
When she returned to the open door there was no light in the hall. She heard him moving somewhere in the distance.
"Where are you, Garry?"
He came back slowly through the dim corridor.
"Were you going without a word to me?" she asked.
He came nearer and leaned against the doorway.
"You are quite right," he said sullenly. "I've been a fool to let us drift in this way. I don't know where we're headed for, and it's time I did."
"What do you mean?"—in soft consternation.
"That there is no hope left for us—and that we are both pretty young, both in love, both close to desperation. At times I tell you I feel like a cornered beast—feel like showing my teeth at the world—like tearing you from it at any cost. I'd do it, too, if it were not for your father and mother. You and I could stand it."
"I would let you do it—if it were not for them," she said.
They looked at one another, both pale.
"Would you give up the whole moral show for me?" he demanded.
"Yes."
"You'd get a first-rate scoundrel."
"I wouldn't care if it were you."
"There's one thing," he said with a bluntness bordering on brutality, "all this is changing me into a man unfit to touch you. I warn you."
"What!"
"I tell you not to trust me!" he said almost savagely. "With heart and soul and body on fire for you—mad for you—I'm not to be trusted!"
"And I?" she faltered, deadly pale.
"You don't know what you're saying!" he said violently.
"I—I begin to think I do.... Garry—Garry—I am learning very fast!... How can I let you go!"
"The idea is," he said grimly, "for me to go before I go insane.... And never again to touch you—"
"Why?"
"Peril!" he said. "I'm just a plain blackguard, Shiela."
"Would it change you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Not to touch me, not to kiss me. Could you go on always just loving me?... Because if you could not—through the years that are coming—I—I had rather take the risk—with you—than lose you."
He stood, head bent, not trusting himself to speak or look at her.
"Good-night," she said timidly.
He straightened up, stared at her, and turned on his heel, saying good night in a low voice.
"Garry!"
"Good-night," he muttered, passing on.
Her heart was beating so violently that she pressed her hand to it, leaning against the door sill.
"Garry!" she faltered, stretching out the other hand to him in the darkness, "I—I do not care about the—risk—if you care to—kiss me—"
He swung round from the shadows to the dimly lighted sill; crossed it. For a moment they looked into one another's eyes; then, blinded, she swayed imperceptibly toward him, sighing as his arms tightened and her own crept up around his neck.
She yielded, resigning lips, and lids, and throat, and fragrant hair, and each slim finger in caress unending.
Conscious of nothing save that body and soul were safe in his beloved keeping, she turned to him in all the passion of a guiltless love, whispering her adoration, her faith, her trust, her worship of the man who held her; then, adrift once more, the breathless magic overwhelmed her; and she drew him to her, closer, desperately, hiding her head on his breast.
"Take me away, Garry," she stammered—"take me with you. There is no use—no use fighting it back. I shall die if you leave me.... Will you take me? I—will be—everything that—that you would have me—that you might wish for—in—in a—wife—"
She was crying now, crying her heart out, her face crushed against his shoulder, clinging to him convulsively.
"Will you take me, Garry? What am I without you? I cannot give you up! I will not.... Nobody can ask that of me—How can they ask that of me?—to give you up—to let you go out of my little world for ever—to turn from you, refuse you!... What a punishment for one instant's folly! If they knew they would not let me suffer this way!—They would want me to tell them—"
His dry lips unclosed. "Then tell them!" he tried to say, but the words were without sound; and, in the crisis of temptation, at the very instant of yielding, suddenly he knew, somehow, that he would not yield.
It came to him calmly, without surprise or shock, this stupid certainty of himself. And at the same moment the crisis was passing, leaving him stunned, impassive, half senseless as the resurgent passion battered at his will power, to wreck and undo it—deafening, imperative, wave on wave, in vain.
The thing to do was to hold on. One of them was adrift; the other dared not let go; he seemed to realise it, somehow. Odd bits of phrases, old-fashioned sayings, maxims long obsolete came to him without reason or sequence—"Greater love hath no man—no man—no man—" and "As ye do unto the least of these "—odd bits of phrases, old-fashioned sayings, maxims, alas! long obsolete, long buried with the wisdom of the dead.
He held her still locked in his arms. From time to time, unconsciously, as her hot grief spent itself, he bent his head, laying his face against hers, while his haggard, perplexed gaze wandered about the room.
In the dimness the snowy bed loomed beside them; pink roses patterned curtain and wall; the tiny night-light threw a roseate glow across her gown. In the fresh, sweet stillness of the room there was no sound or stir save their uneven breathing.
Very gently he lifted one of her hands and looked at it almost curiously—this small white hand so innocently smooth—as unblemished as a child's—this unsullied little hand that for an instant seemed to be slowly relaxing its grasp on the white simplicity around her—here in this dim, fresh, fragrant world of hers, called, intimately, her room.
And here where night and morning had so long held sacred all that he cared for upon earth—here in the white symbol of the world—her room—he gave himself again to her, without a word, without hope, knowing the end of all was near for them.
But it was she, not he, who must make the sign that ended all. And, after a long, long time, as she made no sign:
"Dearest," he breathed, "I know now that you will never go with me—for your father's sake."
That was premature, for she only clung the closer. He waited cautiously, every instinct alert, his head close to hers. And at last the hot fragrance of her tears announced the beginning of the end.
"Shiela?"
A stifled sound from his shoulder where her head lay buried.
"Choose now," he said.
No answer.
"Choose."
She cowered in his arms. He looked at the little hand once more, no longer limp but clenched against his breast. And he knew that the end was close at hand, and he spoke again, forcing her to her victory.
"Dearest, you must choose—"
"Garry!"
"Between those others—and me—"
She shrank out of his arms, turned with a sob, swayed, and sank on her knees beside the bed, burying her head in her crossed arms.
This was her answer; and with it he went away into the darkness, reeling, groping, while every pulse in him hammered ironic salutation to the victor who had loved too well to win. And in his whirling brain sounded the mocking repetition of his own words: "Nothing is lost through love! Nothing is lost—nothing—nothing!"—flouting, taunting him who had lost love itself there on the firing line, for a comrade's sake.
His room was palely luminous with the lustre of the night. On the mantel squatted a little wizened and gilded god peering and leering at him through the shadows—Malcourt's parting gift—the ugliest of the nineteen.
"For," said Malcourt—"there ought to be only eighteen by rights—unless further complications arise; and this really belongs to you, anyway."
So he left the thing on Hamil's mantel, although the latter had no idea what Malcourt meant, or why he made the parting offering.
Now he stood there staring at it like a man whose senses waver, and who fixes some object to steady nerve and brain.
Far in the night the voice of the ocean stirred the silence—the ocean which had given her to him that day in the golden age of fable when life and the world were young together, and love wore a laughing mask.
He listened; all the night was sighing with the sigh of the surf; and the breeze in the trees mourned; and the lustre died out in thickening darkness as he stood there, listening.
Then all around him through the hushed obscurity a vague murmur grew, accentless, sad, interminable; and through the monotone of the falling rain he heard the ocean very far away washing the body of a young world dead to him for ever.
Crouched low beside her bed, face quivering in her arms, she heard, in the stillness, the call of the sea—that enchanted sea which had given him to her that day, when Time and the World were young together in the blessed age of dreams.
And she heard the far complaint of the surf, breaking unsatisfied; and a strange wind flowing through the trees; then silence, suspense; and the world's dark void slowly filling with the dreadful monotone of the rain.
Storm after storm of agony and doubt swept her; she prayed convulsively, at random, reiterating incoherence in blind, frightened repetition till the stupefying sequence lost all meaning.
Exhausted, half-senseless, her hands still clung together, her tear-swollen lips still moved to form his name, asking God's mercy on them both. But the end had come.