"There can be no possible doubt," Louise remarked, as she unfolded her
napkin, "as to our first subject of conversation. Both Sophy and I are
simply dying of curiosity to know about the prince's supper party."
"It was very cheerful and very gay," John said. "Every one seemed to
enjoy it very much."
"Oh, la, la!" Sophy exclaimed. "Is that all you have to tell us? I shall
begin to think that you were up to mischief there."
"I believe," Louise declared, "that every one of the guests is sworn to
secrecy as to what really goes on."
"I can assure you that I wasn't," John told them.
"The papers hint at all sorts of things," Sophy continued. "Every one
who writes for the penny illustrated papers parades his whole stock of
classical knowledge when he attempts to describe them. We read of the
feasts of Lucullus and Bacchanalian orgies. They say that at supper-time
you lie about on sofas and feast for four hours at a stretch."
"The reports seem exaggerated," John laughed. "We went in to supper at
half past twelve and we came out just before two. We sat on chairs, and
the conversation was quite decorous."
"This is most disappointing!" Louise murmured. "I cannot think why the
prince never invites us."
"The ladies of his family were not present," John remarked stiffly.
There was a moment's silence. Louise had looked down at her plate, and
Sophy glanced out of the window.
"Is it true that Calavera was there?" the latter asked presently.
"Yes, she was there," John replied. "She danced after supper."
"Oh, you lucky man!" Louise sighed. "She only dances once or twice a
year off the stage. Is she really so wonderful close to?"
"She is, in her way, very wonderful," John agreed.
"Confess that you admired her," Louise persisted.
"I thought her dancing extraordinary," he confessed, "and, to be
truthful, I did admire her. All the same, hers is a hateful gift."
Louise looked at him curiously for a moment. His face showed few signs
of the struggle through which he had passed, but the grim setting of his
lips reminded her a little of his brother. He had lost, too, something
of the boyishness, the simple light-heartedness of the day before.
Instinctively she felt that the battle had begun. She asked him no more
about the supper party, and Sophy, quick to follow her lead, also
dropped the subject.
Luncheon was not a lengthy meal, and immediately its service was
concluded, Sophy rose to her feet with a sigh.
"I must go and finish my work," she declared. "Let me have the den to
myself for at least an hour, please, Louise. It will take me longer than
that to muddle through your books."
Louise nodded and rose to her feet.
"We will leave you entirely undisturbed," she promised. "I hope, when
you have finished, you will have something more agreeable to say than
you had before lunch. Shall we have our coffee up-stairs?" she
suggested, turning to John.
"I should like to very much," he replied. "I want to talk to you alone."
She led the way up-stairs into the cool, white drawing-room, with its
flower-perfumed atmosphere and its delicate, shadowy air of repose. She
curled herself up in a corner of the divan and gave him his coffee. Then
she leaned back and looked at him.
"So you have really come to London, Mr. Countryman!"
"I have followed you," he answered. "I think you knew that I would. I
tried not to," he went on, after a moment's pause. "I fought against it
as hard as I could; but in the end I had to give in."
"That was very sensible of you," she declared knocking the ash from her
cigarette. "There is no use wearing oneself out fighting a hopeless
battle. You know now that there are things in life which are not to be
found in your passionless corner among the hills. You have realized that
you owe a duty to yourself."
"That was not what brought me," he answered bluntly. "I came for you."
Louise's capacity for fencing seemed suddenly enfeebled. A frontal
attack of such directness was irresistible.
"For me!" she repeated weakly.
"Of course," he replied. "None of your arguments would have brought me
here. If I have desired to understand this world at all, it is because
it is your world. It is you I want--don't you understand that? I thought
you would know it from the first moment you saw me!"
He was suddenly on his feet, leaning over her, a changed man, masterful,
passionate. She opened her lips, but said nothing. She felt herself
lifted up, clasped for a moment in his arms. Unresisting, she felt the
fire of his kisses. The world seemed to have stopped. Then she tried to
push him away, weakly, and against her own will. At her first movement
he laid her tenderly back in her place.
"I am sorry!" he said. "And yet I am not," he added, drawing his chair
close up to her side. "I am glad! You knew that I loved you, Louise. You
knew that it was for you I had come."
She was beginning to collect herself. Her brain was at work again; but
she was conscious of a new confusion in her senses, a new element in her
life. She was no longer sure of herself.
"Listen," she begged earnestly. "Be reasonable! How could I marry you?
Do you think that I could live with you up there in the hills?"
"We will live," he promised, "anywhere you choose in the world."
"Ah, no!" she continued, patting his hand. "You know what your life is,
the things you want in life. You don't know mine yet. There is my work.
You cannot think how wonderful it is to me. You don't know the things
that fill my brain from day to day, the thoughts that direct my life. I
cannot marry you just because--because--"
"Because what?" he interrupted eagerly.
"Because you make me feel--something I don't understand, because you
come and you turn the world, for a few minutes, topsyturvy. But that is
all foolishness, isn't it? Life isn't built up of emotions. What I want
you to understand, and what you, please, must understand, is that at
present our lives are so far, so very far, apart. I do not feel I could
be happy leading yours, and you do not understand mine."
"I have come to find out about yours," John explained. "That is why I am
here. Perhaps I ought to have waited a little time before I spoke to you
as I did just now. Come, you can forget what I have said and done; but
to me it will be an everlasting joy. I shall treasure the memory of it.
It will help me--I can't tell you quite in what way it will help me. But
for the rest, I will serve my apprenticeship. I will try to get into
sympathy with the things that please you. It will not take me long. As
soon as you feel that we are drawing closer together, I will ask you
again what I have asked you this afternoon. In the meantime, I may be
your friend, may I not? You will let me see a great deal of you? You
will help me just a little?"
Louise leaned back in her chair. She had been carried off her feet,
brought face to face with emotions which she dared not analyze. Perhaps,
after all her self-dissection, there were still secret chambers. She
thought almost with fear of what they might contain. Her sense of
superiority was vanishing. She was, after all, like other women.
"Yes," she promised, "I will help. We will leave it at that. Some day
you shall talk to me again, if you like. In the meantime, remember we
are both free. You have not known many women, and you may change your
mind when you have been longer in London. Perhaps it will be better for
you if you do!"
"That is quite impossible," John said firmly. "You see," he went on,
looking at her with shining eyes, "I know now what I half believed from
the first moment that I saw you. I love you!"
Springing restlessly to her feet, she walked across the room and back
again. Action of some sort seemed imperative. A curious hypnotic feeling
seemed to be dulling all her powers of resistance. She looked into her
life and she was terrified. Everything had grown insignificant. It
couldn't really be possible that with her brains, her experience, this
man who had dwelt all his life in the simple ways had yet the power to
show her the path toward the greater things!
Through the complex web of emotions which made up her temperament there
suddenly sprang a primitive instinct, the primitive instinct of all
women, rebelling against the first touch of a master's hand. Was she to
find herself wrong and this man right? Was she to submit, to accept from
his hand the best gifts of life--she who had looked for them in such
very high, such very inaccessible places?
She felt like a child again. She trembled a little as she sat down by
his side. It was not in this fashion that she had intended to hear what
he had to say.
"I don't know what is the matter with me to-day," she murmured
distractedly. "I think I must send you away. You disturb my thoughts. I
can't see life clearly. Don't hope for too much from me," she begged.
"But don't go away," she added, with a sudden irresistible impulse of
anxiety. "Oh, I wish--I wish you understood me and everything about me,
without my having to say a word!"
"I feel what you are," he answered, "and that is sufficient."
Once more she rose to her feet and walked across to the window. An
automobile had stopped in the street below. She looked down upon it with
a sudden frozen feeling of apprehension.
John moved to her side, and for him, too, the joy of those few moments
was clouded. A little shiver of presentiment took its place. He
recognized the footman whom he saw standing upon the pavement.
"It is the Prince of Seyre," Louise faltered.
"Must you see him?" John muttered.
"Yes!"
"Send him away," John begged. "We haven't finished yet. I won't say
anything more to upset you. What I want now is some practical guidance."
"I cannot send him away!"
John glanced toward her and hated himself for his fierce jealousy. She
was looking very white and very pathetic. The light had gone from her
eyes. He felt suddenly dominant, and, with that feeling, there came all
the generosity of the conqueror.
"Good-by!" he said. "Perhaps I can see you some time to-morrow."
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers, one by one. Then
he left the room. She listened to his footsteps descending the stairs,
firm, resolute, deliberate. They paused, there was a sound of
voices--the prince and he were exchanging greetings; then she heard
other footsteps ascending, lighter, smoother, yet just as deliberate.
Her face grew paler as she listened. There was something which sounded
to her almost like the beating of fate in the slow, inevitable approach
of this unseen visitor.