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Page 117
"That's right." He drew another long breath, this time in sharp
relief. The color was coming back to his face, splotching it
unevenly. "You mustn't tell anyone. You don't know how a beastly
thing like that would spread. You mustn't let anyone have a hint.
Not even my sister."
Arlee's eyes were in shadow. Her voice came slowly. "They would
think so badly of me?"
"No--not of you--but it's the kind of thing, the impossible
things--A girl simply can't afford----"
"She can't afford to have even speculation against her," Arlee
finished quietly, but a little pulse in her throat was beating away
like mad. She knew he spoke the simple truth, but the taste of it
was bitter as gall to her mouth. However she had humbled herself in
secret self-communion, she had known no such shame as this.... She
felt cheapened ... tarnished....
"It's beastly--but she can't," he jerkily agreed, but with evident
relief at her sensible understanding. Perhaps he had remembered
Billy's fearful prophecy of the conversation with which the
adventure would supply her. "But of course nobody has a notion----"
"Not a notion. And I shan't give them any--not till I'm a
white-haired old lady in Mechlin caps, and _then_ I shall make up
for lost time by boring all my world with the story of my romantic
youth and the wild deeds done for me!" She laughed airily, pride
high in her face, hiding her secret hurts.
"And Hill got you out," Falconer repeated, with a sudden twinge of
jealous envy in his young voice. "He--he's a lucky one."
"_I'm_ the lucky one," Arlee flashed. "Think of the glorious luck
for me that sent him to paint there, outside the palace, where a
maid mistook him, and so gave a message. Why, it was a chance in a
million, in ten million--and it happened!"
"Happened?" Falconer looked at her a minute before continuing. Then
he asked quietly, "He told you that he just--happened--there?"
"Yes, he said by accident. He was painting----"
Now Falconer was an honest young man--and a gentleman. Deliberately
he brushed away his rival's generous subterfuge. "He doesn't paint,"
he told her. "He did that for an excuse--for a reason to stay
outside the palace. No chance directed it."
"Why, how--how did he know? Before----"
"He guessed. He was uneasy from the beginning--he made conjectures
and set himself to verify them."
After a moment, "I never knew--_that_!" said Arlee in slow wonder.
"Well, you know now," returned Falconer with a sense of grim justice
to the man he had belittled.
In the silence the girl moved toward the steps. He made a gesture to
stay her.
"You're not going--yet?"
"Yet?" she echoed, faintly mocking. "It's _hours_."
"But--but we can never see this again," he argued, weakly, parrying
with himself.
"We won't--forget it."
The words held a too-keen prophecy for him. He looked at her in
heart-beating uncertainty, and it seemed to him that all his future
was waiting on that moment. Should he speak? Should he utter that
which had been so near utterance when her astounding revelation had
stopped him?... After all, he knew nothing of her--but that she was
lovely and wilful and enchanting--with a capacity for risk--and a
dire disregard of consequences.... She was volatile, unstable,
bewildering--so he thought stiffeningly as he looked at her, but he
looked too long.
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