"'Let him loose, Quarren,' said Sprowl.""'Let him loose, Quarren,' said Sprowl."
He waited for a full minute, watching the struggling men in silent contempt. Then with a shrug he went out into the hall, leisurely put on his hat, picked up his stick, opened the door, and sauntered out into the darkness.
"Now," breathed Quarren fiercely, "you play the man or I'm through with you! He's gone and he won't come back—I'll see to that! And it's up to you to show what you're made of!"
Ledwith, freed, stood white and breathing hard for a few moments. Then a dull flush suffused his thin face; he looked down, stood with hanging head, until Quarren laid a hand on his shoulder.
"It's up to you, Ledwith," he said quietly. "I don't blame you for losing your head a moment, but if you mean what you said, I should say that this is your chance.... And if I were you I'd simply go upstairs and speak to her.... She's been through hell.... She's in it still. Butyou'reout; and you can stay out if you choose. There's no need to wallow if you don't want to. You're not in very good shape yet, but you're a man. And now, if you do care for her, I really believe it's up to you.... Will you go upstairs?"
Ledwith turned and went out into the familiar hall. Then, as though dazed, resting one thin hand on the rail, he mounted the stairway, head hanging, feeling hisway blindly back toward all that life had ever held for him, but which he had been too weak to keep or even to defend.
Quarren waited for a while; Ledwith did not return. After a few minutes an excited maid came down, stared at him, then, reassured, opened the door for him with a smile. And he went out into the starlight.
He had been walking for only a few moments when he overtook Sprowl sauntering down a lane; and the latter glanced around and, recognising him, halted.
"Where's the other hero?" he asked.
"Probably discussing you with the woman he is likely to remarry."
Sprowl shrugged:
"That's what that kind of a man is made for—to marry what others don't have to marry."
"You lie," said Quarren quietly.
Sprowl stared at him: then the long-pent fury overwhelmed his common sense again, and again it was in regard to the woman he had lost by his violence.
"You know," he said, measuring his words, "that you're the same kind of a man, too. And some day, if you're good, you can marry what I don't have to marry——"
He reeled under Quarren's blow, then struck at him blindly with his walking-stick, leaping at him savagely but recoiling, dizzy, half senseless under another blow so terrific that it almost nauseated him.
He stood for a time, supporting himself against a tree; then as his wits returned he lifted his bruised face and stared murderously about him. Quarren was walking toward Witch-Hollow—half way there already and out of earshot as well as sight.
Against the stars something moved on a near hill-top, and Sprowl reeled forward in pursuit, breaking into a heavy and steady run as the thing disappeared in the darkness. But he had seen it move, just beyond that fence, and he seized the top rail and got over and ran forward in the darkness, clutching his stick and calling to Quarren by name.
Where had he gone? He halted to listen, peering around with swollen eyes. Blood dripped from his lips and cheek; he passed his hand over them, glaring, listening. Suddenly he heard a dull sound close behind him in the night; whirled to confront what was coming with an unseen rush, thundering down on him, shaking the very ground.
He made no outcry; there was no escape, nothing to do but to strike; and he struck with every atom of his strength; and went crashing down into darkness. And over his battered body bellowed and raged the bull.
Even the men who found them there in the morning could scarcely drive away the half-crazed brute. And the little daughter of the gardener, who had discovered what was there in the pasture, cowered in the fence corner, crying her heart out for her father's dead master who had spoken kindly to her since she had grown up and who had even taken her into his arms and kissed her the day before when she had brought him a rare orchid from the greenhouse.
Every newspaper in America gave up the right-hand columns to huge headlines and an account of the tragedy at South Linden. Every paper in the worldchronicled it. There were few richer men in the world than Langly Sprowl. The tragedy moved everybody in various ways; stocks, however, did not move either way to the surprise of everybody. On second thoughts, however, the world realised that his wealth had been too solidly invested to cause a flurry. Besides he had a younger brother financing something or other for the Emperor of China. Now he would return. The great race would not become extinct.
That night Quarren went back to the Wycherlys and found Molly waiting for him in the library.
"What on earth did Mary Ledwith want of Jim this evening?" she asked.
"Sprowl was in the house."
"What!"
"That's why the poor child telephoned. She was probably afraid of him, and wanted Jim there."
Molly's teeth clicked:
"Jim would have half-killed him. It's probably a good thing he was in town. What did you do?"
"Nothing. Sprowl went all right."
"What did Mary say to you?"
"I didn't see her."
"You didn'tseeher?"
"No."
Molly's eyes grew rounder:
"Where is Chester Ledwith? He didn't go with you into the house, did he?"
"Yes, he did."
"But where is he? You—you don't mean to say——"
"Yes, I do. He went upstairs and didn't return.... So I waited for a while and then—came back."
They sat silent for a while, then Molly lifted her eyes to his and they were brimming with curiosity.
"If they become reconciled," she said, "how are people going to take it, Rix?"
"Characteristically I suppose."
"You mean that some will be nasty about it?"
"Some."
"But then——"
"Oh, Molly, Molly," he said, smiling, "there are more important things than what a few people are likely to think or say. The girl made a fool of herself, and the man weakened and nearly went to pieces. He's found himself again; he's disposed to help her find herself. It was only one of those messes that the papers report every day. Few get out of such pickles, but I believe these two are going to.... And somehow, do you know—from something Sprowl said to-night, I don't believe that she went the entire limit—took the last ditch."
Molly reddened: "Why?"
"Because, although they do it in popular fiction, men like Sprowl never really boast of their successes. His sort keep silent—when there's anything to conceal."
"Did he boast?"
"He did. I was sure he was lying, and I—" he shrugged.
"Told him so?"
"Well, something of that sort."
"I believe he was lying, too.... It was just like that romantic little fool to run off to Reno after nothing worse than the imprudence of infatuation. I'veknown her a long while, Rix. She's too shallow for real passion, too selfish to indulge it anyway. His name and fortune did the business for her—little idiot. Really she annoys me."
Quarren smiled: "Her late husband seems to like her. Fools feminine have made many a man happy. You'll be nice to her I'm sure."
"Of course.... Everybody will on Mrs. Sprowl's account."
Quarren laughed again, then:
"Meanwhile this Ledwith business has prevented my talking to Strelsa over the telephone," he said.
"Oh, Rix! Yousaidyou were going to surprise her in the morning!"
"But I want to see her, Molly. I don't want to wait——"
"It's after ten and Strelsa has probably retired. She's a perfect farmer, I tell you—yawns horribly every evening at nine. Why, I can't keep her awake long enough to play a hand at Chinese Khan! Be reasonable, Rix. You had planned to surprise her in the morning.... And—I'm lonely without Jim.... Besides, if you are clever enough to burst upon Strelsa's view in the morning when the day is young and all before her, and when she's looking her very best, nobody can tell what might happen.... And I'll whisper in your ear that the child has really missed you.... But don't be in a hurry with her, will you, Rix?"
"No," he said absently.
Molly picked up her knitting.
"If Chester Ledwith doesn't return by twelve I'm going to have the house locked," she said, stifling a yawn.
At twelve o'clock the house was accordingly locked for the night.
"It's enough to compromise her," said Molly, crossly. "What a pair of fools they are."
Strelsa, a pink apron pinned about her, a trowel in her gloved hand, stood superintending the transplanting of some purple asters which not very difficult exploit was being attempted by a local yokel acting as her "hired man."
The garden, a big one with a wall fronting the road, ran back all the way to the terrace in the rear of the house beyond which stretched the western veranda.
And it was out on this veranda that Quarren stepped in the wake of Strelsa's maid, and from there he caught his first view of Strelsa's garden, and of Strelsa herself, fully armed and caparisoned for the perennial fray with old Dame Nature.
"You need not go down there to announce me," he said; "I'll speak to Mrs. Leeds myself."
But before he could move, Strelsa, happening to turn around, saw him on the veranda, gazed at him incredulously for a moment, then brandished her trowel with a clear, distant cry of greeting, and came toward him, laughing in her excitement and surprise. They met midway, and she whipped off her glove and gave him her hand in a firm, cool clasp.
"Why the dickens didn't you wire!" she said. "You're a fraud, Rix! I might easily have been away!—You might have missed me—we might havemissed each other.... Isthatall you care about seeing me?—after all these weeks!"
"I wanted to surprise you," he explained feebly.
"'I wanted to surprise you,' he explained feebly.""'I wanted to surprise you,' he explained feebly."
"Well, you didn't! That is—not much. I'd been thinking of you—and I glanced up and saw you. You're stopping at Molly's I suppose."
"Yes."
"When did you arrive?"
"L-last night," he admitted.
"What! And didn't call me up! I refuse to believe it of you!"
She really seemed indignant, and he followed her into the pretty house where presently she became slightly mollified by his exuberant admiration of the place.
"Are you in earnest?" she said. "Do you really think it so pretty? If you do I'll take you upstairs and show you my room, and the three beautiful spick and span guest rooms. Butyou'llnever occupy one!" she added, still wrathful at his apparent neglect of her. "I don't want anybody here who isn't perfectly devoted to me. And it's very plain that you are not."
He mildly insisted that he was but she denied it, hotly.
"And I shallneverget over it," she added. "But you may come upstairs and see what you have missed."
They went over the renovated house thoroughly; she, secretly enchanted at his admiration and praise of everything, pointed out any object that seemed to have escaped his attention merely to hear him approve it. Finally she relented.
"Youaresatisfactory," she said as they returned to the front veranda and seated themselves. "And really, Rix, I'm so terribly glad to see you that I forgive your neglect.... Are you well? You don't look very well," she added earnestly. "Why are you so white?"
"I'm in fine shape, thank you."
"I didn't mean your figure," she laughed—"Oh, thatwasa common kind of a joke, wasn't it? But I'm only a farmer, Rix. You must expect the ruder and simpler forms of speech from a lady of the woodshed!... Why are you so pale?"
"Do I seem particularly underdone?"
"That's horrid, too. Are you and I going to degenerate just because you work for a living? Youareunusually thin, anyway; and the New York pallor is very noticeable. Will you stay and get sun-burnt?"
"Icouldstay a few days."
"How many?"
"How many do you want me? Two whole days, Strelsa?"
She laughed at him, then looked at him a trifle shyly, but laughed again as she answered:
"I want you to stay always, of course. Don't pretend that you don't know it, because you are perfectly aware that I never tire of you. But if you can stay only two days don't let us waste any time——"
"We're not wasting it here together, are we?"
"Don't you want to walk? I haven't a horse yet, except for agricultural purposes. I'll rinse my hands and take off this apron—" She stood unpinning and untying it, her gray eyes never leaving him in their unabashed delight in him.
Then she disappeared for a few minutes only to reappear wearing a pair of stout little shoes and carrying a walking-stick which she said she used in rough country.
And first they visited her garden where all the old-fashioned autumn flowers were in riotous bloom—scarlet sage, rockets, thickets of gladiolus, heavy borders of asters, marigolds, and coreopsis; and here she gave a few verbal directions to the yokel who gaped toothlessly in reply.
After that, side by side, they swung off together across the hill, she, lithe and slender, setting the springy pace and twirling her walking-stick, he, less accustomed to the open and more so to the smooth hot streets of the city, slackening pace first.
She chided and derided him and bantered him scornfully, then with sudden sweet concern halted, reproaching herself for setting too hot a pace for a city-worn and work-worn man.
But the cool shadows of the woods were near, and she made him rest on the little footbridge—the same bridge where he had encountered Ledwith for the first time in years. He recognised the spot.
After they had seated themselves and Strelsa, resting on the back of the bridge seat, was contentedly dabbling in the stream with her cane, Quarren said, slowly:
"Shall I tell you why I did not disturb you last night, Strelsa?"
"You can't excuse it——"
"You shall be judge and jury. It's rather a long story, though——"
"I am listening."
"Then, it has to do with Ledwith. He's not very well but he's better than he was. You see he wanted to take a course of treatment to regain his health, andthere seemed to be nobody else, so—I offered to see him through."
"That's like you, Rix," she said, looking at him.
"Oh, it wasn't anything—I had nothing to do——"
"That's like you, too. Did you pull him through?"
"He pulled himself through.... It was strenuous for two or three days—and hot as the devil in that sanitarium." ... He laughed. "We both were wrecks when we came out two weeks later—oh, a bit groggy, that's really all.... And he had no place to go—and seemed to be inclined to keep hold of my sleeve—so I telephoned Molly. And she said to bring him up. That was nice of her, wasn't it?"
"Everybody is wonderful except you," she said.
"Nonsense," he said, "it wasn't I who went through a modified hell. He's got a lot of backbone, Ledwith.... And so we came up last night.... And—now here's the interesting part, Strelsa! We strolled over to call on Mrs. Ledwith——"
"What!"
"Certainly. I myself didn't see her but—" he laughed—"she seemed to be at home to her ex-husband."
"Rix!"
"It's a fact. He went back there for breakfast this morning after he'd changed his clothes."
"After—what?"
"Yes. It seems that they started out in a canoe about midnight and he didn't turn up at Witch-Hollow until just before breakfast—and then he only stayed long enough to change to boating flannels.... You should see him; he's twenty years younger.... I fancy they'll get along together in future."
"Oh, Rix!" she said, "that was darling of you! Youarewonderful even if you don't seem to know it!... And to think—tothinkthat Mary Ledwith is going to be happy again!... Oh, you don't know how it has been with her—the silly, unhappy little thing!
"Why, after Mrs. Sprowl left, the girl went all to pieces. Molly and I did what we could—but Molly isn't strong and Mrs. Ledwith was at my house almost all the time—Oh, it was quite dreadful, and I'm sure she was really losing her senses—because—I think I'll tell you—I tell you everything—" She hesitated, and then, lowering her voice:
"She had come to see me, and she was lying on the lounge in my dressing-room, crying; and I was doing my hair. And first I knew she sobbed out that she had killed her husband and wanted to die, and she caught up that pistol that Sir Charles gave me at the Bazaar last winter—it looked like a real one—and the next thing I knew she had fired a charge of Japanese perfume at her temple, and it was all over her face and hair!... Don't laugh, Rix; she thought she had killed herself, and I had a horrid, messy time of it reviving her."
"You poor child," he exclaimed trying not to laugh—"she had no brains to blow out anyway.... That's a low thing to say. Ledwith likes her.... I really believe she's been scared into life-long good behaviour."
"She wasn't—really—horrid," said Strelsa in a low voice. "She told me so."
"I don't doubt it," he said. "But one way or the other you might as well reproach a humming-bird for its morals. There are such people."
After a short silence she said:
"Tell me about people in town."
"There are few there. Besides," he added smilingly, "I don't see much of your sort of people."
"Mysort?" she repeated, lifting her gray eyes. "Am I not your sort, Rix?"
"Are you? You should see me in my overalls and shirt-sleeves, stained with solvents and varnish, sticky with glue and reeking turpentine, ironing out a canvas with a warm flat-iron!... Am I your kind, Strelsa?"
"Yes.... Am Iyourkind?"
"You always were. You know that."
"Yes, I do know it, now." She sat very still, hands folded, considering him with gray and speculative eyes.
"From the very beginning," she said, "you have never once disappointed me."
"What!" he exclaimed incredulously.
"Never," she repeated.
"Why—why, I got in wrong the very first time!" he said.
"You mean that wager we made?"
"Yes."
"But you behaved like a good sportsman."
"Well, I wasn't exactly a bounder. But you were annoyed."
She smiled: "Was I?"
"You seemed to be."
"Yet I sat in a corner behind some palms with you until daylight."
They looked at each other and laughed over the reminiscence. Then he said:
"Ididdisappoint you when you found out what sort of a man I was."
"No, you didn't."
"I proved it, too," he said under his breath.
Her lips were set firmly, almost primly, but she blushed.
"You meant to be nice to me," she said. "You meant to do me honour."
"The honour of offering you such a man as I was," he said with smiling bitterness.
"Rix!Iwas the fool—the silly little prig! I have blushed and blushed to remember how I behaved; how I snubbed you and—good heavens!—even lectured and admonished you!—How I ran away from you with all the self-possession andsavoir-faireof a country schoolgirl! What on earth you thought of me in those days I dread to surmise——"
"But Strelsa, what was there to do except what you did?"
"If I'd known anything I could have thanked you for caring that way for me and dismissed you as a friend instead of fleeing as though you had affronted me——"
"Ididaffront you."
"You didn't intend to.... It would have been easy enough to tell you that I liked you—but not that way.... And all those miserable, lonely, unhappy months could have been spared me——"
"Wereyouunhappy?"
"Didn't you know it?"
"I never dreamed you were."
"Well, I was—thinking of what I had done to you.... And all those men bothering me, every moment, and everybody at me to marry everybody else—and all Iwanted was to be friends withyou!... I wasn't sure of what I wanted from the very beginning, of course, but I knew it as soon as I saw you at the Bazaar again.... I wassolonely, Rix——"
She looked up out of clear, fearless eyes; he leaned forward and took her hands in his.
"I know what you want," he said quietly. "You want my friendship and you have it—every atom of it, Strelsa. I will never overstep the borders again; I understand you thoroughly.... You know what you have done for me—what I was when you came into my life. My gratitude is a living thing. Through you, because of you, the whole unknown world—all of real life—has opened before me. You did it for me, Strelsa."
"You did it for yourself and for me," she said in a low voice. "What are you trying to tell me, Rix? ThatIdid this foryou? When it is you—it was you from the first—it has always been you who led, who awakened first, who showed courage and common sense and patience and the cheerful wisdom which—which saved me——"
The emotion in her voice stirred him thrillingly; her hands lay confidently in his; her gray eyes met his so sweetly, so honestly, that hope awoke for a moment.
"Strelsa," he said, "however it was with us—however it is now, I think that together we amount to more than we ever could have amounted to apart."
"I know it," she said fervently. "I was nothing until I began to comprehend you."
"What was I before you awoke me?"
"A man neglecting his nobler self.... But it could not have lasted; your real self could not have longendured that harlequinade we once thought was real life.... I'm glad if you think that I—something about me—aroused you.... But if I had not, somebody or some circumstance would have very soon served the same purpose."
"Do you think so?" he said, stooping to kiss her hands. She looked at him while he did so, confused by the quick pleasure of the contact, then schooled herself to endure it, setting her lips in a grave, firm line.
And it was a most serious face he lifted his eyes to as she quietly withdrew her fingers from his.
"You always played the courtier to perfection," she said, trying to speak lightly. "Tell me about that accomplished and noble peer, Lord Dankmere. Are you still inclined to like him?"
He accepted her light and careless change of tone instantly, and spoke laughingly of Dankmere:
"He's really a mighty nice fellow, Strelsa. Anyway, I like him. Andwhatdo you think his lordship has been and gone and done?"
"Has he become a Russian dancer, Rix?"
"No, bless his heart! He's fallen head over ears in love and is engaged and is going to marry!"
"Who?"
"Our stenographer!"
"Rix!"
"Certainly.... She's pretty and sweet and good andmostworthy; and she's as crazy about Dankmere as he is about her.... Really, Strelsa, she's a charming young girl, and she'll make as pretty a countess as any of the Dankmeres have married in many a generation."
Strelsa's lip curled: "I don't doubt that. Theywere always a horrid cock-fighting, prize-fighting, dissolute lot, weren't they?"
"Something like that. But the present Dankmere is a good sort—really he is, Strelsa. And as for Jessie Vining, she's sweet. You'll be nice to them, won't you?"
She said: "I'd be nice to them anyway. But now that you ask me to I'll be whatever you wish."
"Youarea corker," he said almost tenderly; but with a slight smile she kept her hands out of his reach.
"We mustn't degenerate into sentimentalism just because we're glad to see each other," she said so calmly that he did not notice the tremor in her voice. "And by the way, how is Mr. Westguard?"
They both laughed.
"Speaking of sentiment," said Quarren, "Karl now exudes it daily. He and Bleecker De Groot and Mrs. Caldera—to Lester's rage—have started a weekly paper calledBrotherhood, consisting of pabulum for the horny-handed.
"I couldn't do anything with Karl. Just look at him! He's really a good story-teller if he chooses. He could write jolly-good novels if he would. But the spectacle of De Groot weeping over a Bowery audience has finished him; and he's hard at work on a volume called 'The World's Woe,' and means to publish it himself because no publisher will take it."
"Poor Karl," she said, smiling.
"No," said Quarren, "that's the worst of it. His aunt has settled a million on him.... I tell you, Strelsa, the rich convert has less honour among the poor than the dingiest little 'dip' among the gorgeous corsairs of Wall Street.
"I don't know how it happens, but Christ was never yet successfully preached from Fifth Avenue, and the millionaire whose heart bleeds for the poor needs a sterner surgeon than a complacent conscience to really stop the hemorrhage."
"Rich men do good, Rix," she said thoughtfully.
"But not by teaching or practising the thrift of celestial insurance—not by admonition to orthodoxy and exhortation to worship a Creator who sees to it that no two people are created equal. There is only one thing the rich can give to the poor for Christ's sake; and even that will always be taken with suspicion and distrust. No; there are only two ways to live: one is the life of self-discipline; the other is to actually imitate the militant Son of Man whose faith we pretend to profess—but whose life-history we merely parody, turning His crusade into a grotesque carnival. I know of no third course consistent."
"To lead an upright life within bounds where your lines have fallen, or to strip and go forth militant," she mused. "There is no third course, as you say.... Do you know, Rix, that I have become a wonderfully happy sort of person?"
"So have I," he said, laughingly.
"It's just because we have something to do, isn't it?"
"That—and the leisure which the idle never have. It seems like a paradox, doesn't it?—to say that the idle never have any time to themselves."
"I know what you mean. I expect to work rather hard the rest of my life," she said seriously, "and yet I can foresee lots and lots of most delicious leisure awaiting me."
"Do you foresee anything else, pretty prophetess?"
"What else do you mean?"
"Well, for example, you will be alone here all winter."
"Do you mean loneliness?" she asked, smiling. "I don't expect to suffer from that. Molly will be here all winter and—you will write to me—" she turned to him—"won't you, Rix?"
"Certainly. Besides I'm coming up to see you every week."
"Every week!" she repeated, taken a little aback but smiling her sweet, confused smile. "Do you realise what you are so gaily engaging to do?"
"Perfectly. I'm going to build up here."
"What!"
"Of course."
"A—a house?"
He looked at her, hesitated, then looking away:
"Either a house or—an addition."
"Anaddition?"
"If you'll let me, Strelsa—some day."
She understood him then. The painful colour stole into her cheeks, faintly burning, and she closed her eyes for a moment to endure it, sitting silent, motionless, her little sun-tanned hands tightly clasped on her knees.
Then, unclosing her eyes she looked at him, delicate lips tightening.
"I thought our relations were to remain on a higher plane," she said steadily.
"Our relations are to remain what you desire them to be, dear."
"I desire them to be what they are—always."
"Then that is my wish also," he said with a smile so genuine and gay that, a little confused by his acquiescence, her own response was slow. But presently her smile dawned, a little tremulous and uncertain, and her gray eyes remained wistful though the lips curled deliciously.
"I would do anything in the world for you, Rix, except—that," she said in a low voice.
"I know you would, you dear girl."
"Don't you really believe it?"
"Of course I do!"
"But—Ican'tdo that—ever. It would—would spoil you for me.... What in the world would I do if you were spoiled for me, Rix? I haven't anybody else.... What would I do here—all alone? I couldn't stay—I wouldn't know what to do—where to go in the world.... It would be lonely—lonely——"
She bent her head, and remained so, gray eyes fixed on her clasped fingers. For a long while she sat bowed over, thinking; once or twice she lifted her eyes to look at him, but her gaze always became confused and remote; and he did not offer to break the silence.
At last she looked up with a movement of decision, her face clearing.
"You understand, don't you, Rix?" she said, rising.
He nodded, rising also; and they descended the steps together and walked slowly away toward Witch-Hollow.
From the hill-top they noticed one of Sprowl's farm-waggons slowly entering the drive, followed on foot by several men and a little girl. Her blond hair and apronfluttered in the breeze. She was too far away for them to see that she was weeping.
"I wonder what they've got in that waggon?" said Quarren, curiously.
Strelsa's gaze became indifferent, then passed on and rested on the blue range of hills beyond.
"Isn't it wonderful about Chrysos," she said.
"The quaint little thing," he said almost tenderly. "She told Molly what happened—how she sat down under a fence to tie wild strawberries for Sir Charles, and how, all at once, she realised what his going out of her life meant to her—and how the tears choked her to silence until she suddenly found herself in his arms.... Can you see it as it happened, Strelsa?—as pretty a pastoral as ever the older poets—" He broke off abruptly, and she looked up, but he was still smiling as though the scene of another man's happiness, so lightly evoked, were a visualisation of his own. And again her gray eyes grew wistful as though shyly pleading for his indulgence and silently asking his pardon for all that she could never be to him or to any man.
So they came across fields and down through fragrant lanes to Witch-Hollow, where the fat setter gambolled ponderously around them with fat barkings and waggings, and where Molly, sewing on the porch, smoothed the frail and tiny garment over her knee and raised her pretty head to survey them with a smiling intelligence that made Strelsa blush.
"Itisn'tso!" she found an opportunity to whisper into Molly's ear. "If you look at us that way you'll simply make him miserable and break my heart."
Molly glanced after Quarren who had wandered indoors to find a cigarette in the smoking-room.
"If you don't marry that delectable young man," she said, "I'll take a stick and beat you, Strelsa."
"I don't want to—I don'twantto!" protested the girl, getting possession of Molly's hands and covering them with caresses. And, resting her soft lips on Molly's fingers, she looked at her; and the young matron saw tears glimmering under the soft, dark lashes.
"Ican'tlove him—that way," whispered the girl. "I would if I could.... I couldn't care for him more than I do.... And—and it terrifies me to think of losing him."
"Losing him?"
"Yes—by doing what you—what he—wishes."
"You think you'll lose him if you marry him?"
"I—yes. It would spoil him for me—spoil everything for me in the world——"
"Well, you listen to me," said Molly, exasperated. "When he has stood a certain amount of this silliness from you he'll really and actually turn into the sexless comrade you think you want. But he'll go elsewhere for a mate. There are plenty suitable in the world. If you'd never been born there would have been another for him. If you passed out of his life there would some day be another.
"Will we women never learn the truth?—that at best we are incidental to man, but that, when we love, man is the whole bally thing to us?
"Let him escape and you'll see, Strelsa. You'll get, perhaps, what you're asking for now, but he'll get what he is asking for, too—if not from you, from some girl of whom you and I and he perhaps have never heard.
"But she exists; don't worry. And any man worth his title is certain to encounter her sooner or later."
The girl, flushed, dumb, watched her out of wide gray eyes in which the unshed tears had dried. The pretty matron slowly shook her head:
"Because you once bit into tainted fruit you laid the axe to the entire orchard. What nonsense! Rottenness is the exception; soundness the rule. But you concluded that the hazard of bad fortune—that the unhappy chance of your first and only experience—was not an exception but the universal rule.... Very well; think it! He'll get over it some time, but you never will, Strelsa. You'll remember it all your life.
"For I tell you that we women who go to our graves without having missed a single pang—we who die having known happiness and its shadow which is sorrow—the happiness and sorrow which come through love of man alone—die as we should die, in deep content of destiny fulfilled—which is the only peace beyond all understanding."
The girl lowered her head and, resting her cheek on Molly's shoulder, looked down at the baby garment on her knees.
"That also?" she whispered.
"Yes.... Unless we pass that way, also, we can never die content.... But until a month ago I did not know it.... Strelsa—Strelsa! Are you never going to know what love can be?"
The girl rose slowly, flushing and whitening by turns, and stood a moment, her hands covering her eyes.
And standing so:
"Do you think he will go away—from me—some day?"
"Yes; he will go—unless——"
"Must it be—that way?"
"It will be that way, Strelsa."
"I had never thought of that."
"Think of it as the truth. It will be so unless you love him in his own fashion—and for his own sake. Try—if you care for him enough to try.... And if you do, you will love him for your own sake, too."
"I—I had thought of—of giving myself—for his sake—because he wishes it.... I don't believe I'll be—much afraid—of him. Do you?"
Molly's wise sweet eyes sparkled with silent laughter. Then without another glance at the tall, young girl before her she picked up her sewing, drew the needle from the hem, and smoothed out the lace embroidery on her knees.
After a while she said:
"Jim's returning on the noon train. Will you and Rix be here to luncheon?"
"I don't know."
"Well, ask him; I have my orders to give if you'll stay."
Strelsa walked into the house; Quarren, still hunting about for a cigarette, looked up as she entered the smoking-room.
"Where the dickens does Jim keep his cigarettes?" he asked. "Do you know, Strelsa?"
"You poor boy!" she exclaimed laughingly, "have you been searching all this time? The wonder is that you haven't perished. Why didn't you ask me for one when we were at—our house?"
"Yourhouse?" he corrected, smiling.
Her gray eyes met his with a frightened sort of courage.
"Our house—if you wish—" But her lips had begun to tremble and she could not control them or force from them another word for all her courage.
He came over to where she stood, one slim hand resting against the wall; and she looked back bravely into his keen eyes—the clear, direct, questioning eyes of a boy.
"I—I will—marry you," she said.
A swift flush touched his face to the temples.
"Don't you—want me?" she said, tremulously.
"If you love me, Strelsa."
"Isn't it enough—that you—love——"
"No, dear."
She lost her colour.
"Rix! Don't you want me?" she faltered.
"Not unless you want me, Strelsa."
She drew a long unsteady breath. Suddenly the tears sprang to her eyes, and she held out both hands to him, blindly.
"I—do love you," she whispered.... "I'll give what you give.... Only you must teach me—not to be—afraid."
Her cheek lay close to his shoulder; his arms drew her nearer. And, after he had waited a long while, her gray eyes, which had been watching his face, slowly closed, and she lifted her lips toward his.
THE END