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Page 48
The mask was slipping. Only a flimsy veil of sentiment now over his
rash will. Only a light pretense of her freedom, of his courtesy. He
was beginning to declare himself....
But she must not let him suspect that she knew. She must _not_.
Her spirit responded fiercely to this tense demand upon it. The
dread, the panic of the night was gone. The fear that had shaken her
was beaten down like a cowardly dog. Excitement burned in her blood.
Everything depended upon her coolness and her wit, upon a look,
perhaps, the turn of a phrase, the droop of an eye, and she was
passionately resolved that neither coolness nor wit should fail her,
nor words nor looks nor eyes betray the heart of her. She would play
her r�le with every breath she drew.
* * * * *
She crossed the room at the luncheon summons in the nervous tensity
of mood that an actress might go to play a part in which her career
would live or die. Every half hour with Kerissen was now a duel,
every minute was a stroke to be parried, and she flung herself into
that duel with the desperate exhilaration of such daring. Her hands
were icy, and her cheeks were flaming with the excitement which
consumed her, but she revealed no other trace of it, and she
wondered to herself at the inscrutable fairness of the face which,
looked back at her from the glass.
None of the record of those frightened, sleepless hours was written
there, none of her furious pride, her fixed intensity. Only the soft
shadows under the blue eyes gave her face a look of added delicacy
for all the unnatural flare of brilliant color, and a faint
wistfulness in those eyes seemed to overlay the smiles she
practiced, like a cloud shadow on a brook. And never, never, in all
her glad, care-free days, had she been as distractingly pretty as
she was that moment. With an angry little pang she recognized it,
pinning on the lace hat with its enchanting rose, and then
desperately she resolved to employ it and added two of Kerissen's
pink roses to the costume.
She thought the scene was very like a stage, when she came out
through the narrow door which the old woman unlocked from a key she
carried on a girdle, and slowly descended the stone steps. Beneath
the wide-spreading lebbek a low table was laid for luncheon with two
wicker chairs beside it. The green of the fresh turf was as vivid as
stage grass; the lilies loomed unreally large and white; the
poinsettias flaunted like red paper flowers behind the vivid picture
that the Captain made in a dazzling buff and green uniform picked
out with gold. His bow was theatric, so was the deep look of
exaggerated admiration he bent upon her--it was strange to remember
that her danger was not theatric also. But that was deadly real, and
real, too, was the sudden surge of color into the young man's sallow
face.
"You are kind to my roses--if not to me," he said quickly, and held
out his hand for the brief little clasp she accorded.
"Your roses are dumb and have said nothing to make me cross," she
laughed lightly, and looked swiftly about her. "How lovely this is,"
she ran on, "and how charming to feel a breeze. That room is rather
warm and close.... Is you sister still too ill to come?"
And scarcely waiting for the assent which he began to frame with his
searching eyes upon her, she added, "I am afraid I made her angry
last night by intruding upon her. But I heard her voice and ran back
to her room to ask after her. She wouldn't let me stay at all."
It was droll how natural her voice sounded, she thought. His eyes
held their fixed scrutiny in an instant, then dropped carelessly
away, as he drew forward the wicker chairs. "She is a _nerveuse_,
you understand," he said with an air of indolent resignation, "and
one can do nothing for that sort of thing. A crisis comes--one must
wait for it to pass.... She regrets that condition.... And she
wished me to present her regrets to you," he added suavely, "for
that reception of you last night. She was ill and did not expect
you--and she did not wish you to see her in that condition."
"I should not have gone," acknowledged Arlee, "but, as I said, I
heard voices from the ante-room and thought I would like to see
her.... That pretty little maid she gave me does not speak any
English, so I cannot send any messages."
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