Bannerman pushed back his chair a few inches, shifting position the
better to benefit of a faint air that fanned in through the open
window. Maitland, twisting the sticky stem of a liqueur glass between
thumb and forefinger, sat in patient waiting for the lawyer to speak.
But Bannerman was in no hurry; his mood was rather one contemplative
and genial. He was a round and cherubic little man, with the face of a
guileless child, the acumen of a successful counsel for soulless
corporations (that is to say, of a high order), no particular sense of
humor, and a great appreciation of good eating. And Maitland was famous
in his day as one thoroughly conversant with the art of ordering a
dinner.
That which they had just discussed had been uncommon in all respects;
Maitland's scheme of courses and his specification as to details had
roused the admiration of the Primordial's chef and put him on his
mettle. He had outdone himself in his efforts to do justice to Mr.
Maitland's genius; and the Primordial in its deadly conservatism
remains to this day one of the very few places in New York where good,
sound cooking is to be had by the initiate.
Therefore Bannerman sucked thoughtfully at his cigar and thought fondly
of a salad that had been to ordinary salads as his 80-H.-P. car was to
an electric buckboard. While Maitland, with all time at his purchase,
idly flicked the ash from his cigarette and followed his attorney's
meditative gaze out through the window.
Because of the heat the curtains were looped back, and there was
nothing to obstruct the view. Madison Square lay just over the sill, a
dark wilderness of foliage here and there made livid green by
arc-lights. Its walks teemed with humanity, its benches were crowded.
Dimly from its heart came the cool plashing of the fountain, in lulls
that fell unaccountably in the roaring rustle of restless feet. Over
across, Broadway raised glittering walls of glass and stone; and thence
came the poignant groan and rumble of surface cars crawling upon their
weary and unvarying rounds.
And again Maitland thought of the City, and of Destiny, and of the grey
girl the silhouette of whose hand was imprisoned beneath the brass bowl
on his study desk. For by now he was quite satisfied that she and none
other had trespassed upon the privacy of his rooms, obtaining access to
them in his absence by means as unguessable as her motive. Momentarily
he considered taking Bannerman into his confidence; but he questioned
the advisability of this: Bannerman was so severely practical in his
outlook upon life, while this adventure had been so madly whimsical, so
engagingly impossible. Bannerman would be sure to suggest a call at the
precinct police station.... If she had made way with anything, it would
be different; but so far as Maitland had been able to determine, she
had abstracted nothing, disturbed nothing beyond a few square inches of
dust....
Unwillingly Bannerman put the salad out of mind and turned to the
business whose immediate moment had brought them together. He hummed
softly, calling his client to attention. Maitland came out of his
reverie, vaguely smiling.
"I'm waiting, old man. What's up?"
"The Graeme business. His lawyers have been after me again. I even had
a call from the old man himself."
"Yes? The Graeme business?" Maitland's expression was blank for a
moment; then comprehension informed his eyes. "Oh, yes; in connection
with the Dougherty investment swindle."
"That's it. Graeme's pleading for mercy."
Maitland lifted his shoulders significantly. "That was to be expected,
wasn't it? What did you tell him?"
"That I'd see you."
"Did you hold out to him any hopes that I'd be easy on the gang?"
"I told him that I doubted if you could be induced to let up."
"Then why--?"
"Why, because Graeme himself is as innocent of wrong-doing and
wrong-intent as you are."
"You believe that?"
"I do," affirmed Bannerman. His fat pink fingers drummed uneasily on
the cloth for a few moments. "There isn't any question that the
Dougherty people induced you to sink your money in their enterprise
with intent to defraud you."
"I should think not," Maitland interjected, amused.
"But old man Graeme was honest, in intention at least. He meant no
harm; and in proof of that he offers to shoulder your loss himself, if
by so doing he can induce you to drop further proceedings. That proves
he's in earnest, Dan, for although Graeme is comfortably well to do,
it's a known fact that the loss of a cool half-million, while it's a
drop in the bucket to you, would cripple him."
"Then why doesn't he stand to his associates, and make them each pay
back their fair share of the loot? That'd bring his liability down to
about fifty thousand."
"Because they won't give up without a contest in the courts. They deny
your proofs--you have those papers, haven't you?"
"Safe, under lock and key," asserted Maitland sententiously. "When the
time comes I'll produce them."
"And they incriminate Graeme?"
"They make it look as black for him as for the others. Do you honestly
believe him innocent, Bannerman?"
"I do, implicitly. The dread of exposure, the fear of notoriety when
the case comes up in court, has aged the man ten years. He begged me
with tears in his eyes to induce you to drop it and accept his offer of
restitution. Don't you think you could do it, Dan?"
"No, I don't." Maitland shook his head with decision. "If I let up, the
scoundrels get off scot-free. I have nothing against Graeme; I am
willing to make it as light as I can for him; but this business has got
to be aired in the courts; the guilty will have to suffer. It will be a
lesson to the public, a lesson to the scamps, and a lesson to
Graeme--not to lend his name too freely to questionable enterprises."
"And that's your final word, is it?"
"Final, Bannerman.... You go ahead; prepare your case and take it to
court. When the time comes, as I say, I'll produce these papers. I
can't go on this way, letting people believe that I'm an easy mark just
because I was unfortunate enough to inherit more money than is good for
my wholesome."
Maitland twisted his eyebrows in deprecation of Bannerman's attitude;
signified the irrevocability of his decision by bringing his fist down
upon the table--but not heavily enough to disturb the other diners;
and, laughing, changed the subject.
For some moments he gossiped cheerfully of his new power-boat,
Bannerman attending to the inconsequent details with an air of
abstraction. Once or twice he appeared about to interrupt, but changed
his mind: but because his features were so wholly infantile and open
and candid, the time came when Maitland could no longer ignore his
evident perturbation.
"Now what's the trouble?" he demanded with a trace of asperity. "Can't
you forget that Graeme business and--"
"Oh, it's not that." Bannerman dismissed the troubles of Mr. Graeme
with an airy wave of a pudgy hand. "That's not my funeral, nor
yours.... Only I've been worried, of late, by your utterly careless
habits."
Maitland looked his consternation. "In heaven's name, what now?" And
grinned as he joined hands before him in simulated petition. "Please
don't read me a lecture just now, dear boy. If you've got something
dreadful on your chest wait till another day, when I'm more in the
humor to be found fault with."
"No lecture." Bannerman laughed nervously. "I've merely been wondering
what you have done with the Maitland heirlooms."
"What? Oh, those things? They're safe enough--_in_ the safe out at
Greenfields."
"To be sure! Quite so!" agreed the lawyer, with ironic heartiness. "Oh,
quite." And proceeded to take all Madison Square into his confidence,
addressing it from the window. "Here's a young man, sole proprietor of
a priceless collection of family heirlooms,--diamonds, rubies,
sapphires galore; and he thinks they're safe enough _in_ a safe at his
country residence, fifty miles from anywhere! What a simple, trustful
soul it is!"
"Why should I bother?" argued Maitland sulkily. "It's a good, strong
safe, and--and there are plenty of servants around," he concluded
largely.
"Precisely. Likewise plenty of burglars. You don't suppose a determined
criminal like Anisty, for instance, would bother himself about a
handful of thick-headed servants, do you?"
"Anisty?"--with a rising inflection of inquiry.
Bannerman squared himself to face his host, elbows on table. "You don't
mean to say you've not heard of Anisty, the great Anisty?" he demanded.
"I dare say I have," Maitland conceded, unperturbed. "Name rings
familiar, somehow."
"Anisty,"--deliberately, "is said to be the greatest jewel thief the
world has ever known. He has the police of America and Europe by the
ears to catch him. They have been hot on his trail for the past three
years, and would have nabbed him a dozen times if only he'd had the
grace to stay in one place long enough. The man who made off with the
Bracegirdle diamonds, smashing a burglar-proof vault into scrap-iron to
get 'em--don't you remember?"
"Ye-es; I seem to recall the affair, now that you mention it," Maitland
admitted, bored. "Well, and what of Mr. Anisty?"
"Only what I have told you, taken in connection with the circumstance
that he is known to be in New York, and that the Maitland heirlooms are
tolerably famous--as much so as your careless habits, Dan. Now, a safe
deposit vault--"
"Um-m-m," considered Maitland. "You really believe that Mr. Anisty has
his bold burglarious eye on my property?"
"It's a big enough haul to attract him," argued the lawyer earnestly;
"Anisty always aims high.... Now, _will_ you do what I have been
begging you to do for the past eight years?"
"Seven," corrected Maitland punctiliously. "It's just seven years since
I entered into mine inheritance and you became my counselor."
"Well, seven, then. But will you put those jewels in safe deposit?"
"Oh, I suppose so."
"But when?"
"Would it suit you if I ran out to-night?" Maitland demanded so
abruptly that Bannerman was disconcerted.
"I--er--ask nothing better."
"I'll bring them in town to-morrow. You arrange about the vault and
advise me, will you, like a good fellow?"
"Bless my soul! I never dreamed that you would be so--so--"
"Amenable to discipline?" Maitland grinned, boylike, and, leaning back,
appreciated Bannerman's startled expression with keen enjoyment. "Well,
consider that for once you've scared me. I'm off--just time to catch
the ten-twenty for Greenfields. Waiter!"
He scrawled his initials at the bottom of the bill presented him, and
rose. "Sorry, Bannerman," he said, chuckling, "to cut short a pleasant
evening. But you shouldn't startle me so, you know. Pardon me if I run;
I _might_ miss that train."
"But there was something else--"
"It can wait."
"Take a later train, then."
"What! With this grave peril hanging over me? _Im_possible! 'Night."
Bannerman, discomfited, saw Maitland's shoulders disappear through the
dining-room doorway, meditated pursuit, thought better of it, and
reseated himself, frowning.
"Mad Maitland, indeed!" he commented.
As for the gentleman so characterized, he emerged, a moment later, from
the portals of the club, still chuckling mildly to himself as he
struggled into a light evening overcoat. His temper, having run the
gamut of boredom, interest, perturbation, mystification, and plain
amusement, was now altogether inconsequential: a dangerous mood for
Maitland. Standing on the corner of Twenty-sixth Street he thought it
over, tapping the sidewalk gently with his cane. Should he or should he
not carry out his intention as declared to Bannerman, and go to
Greenfields that same night? Or should he keep his belated engagement
with Cressy's party?
An errant cabby, cruising aimlessly but hopefully, sighted Maitland's
tall figure and white shirt from a distance, and bore down upon him
with a gallant clatter of hoofs.
"Kebsir?" he demanded breathlessly, pulling in at the corner.
Maitland came out of his reverie and looked up slowly. "Why yes, thank
you," he assented amiably.
"Where to, sir?"
Maitland paused on the forward deck of the craft and faced about,
looking the cabby trustfully in the eye. "I leave it to you," he
replied politely. "Just as you please."
The driver gasped.
"You see," Maitland continued with a courteous smile, "I have two
engagements: one at Sherry's, the other with the ten-twenty train from
Long Island City. What would you, as man to man, advise me to do,
cabby?"
"Well, sir, seein' as you puts it to me straight," returned the cabby
with engaging candor, "I'd go home, sir, if I was you, afore I got any
worse."
"Thank you," gravely. "Long Island City depôt, then, cabby."
Maitland extended himself languidly upon the cushions. "Surely," he
told the night, "the driver knows best--he and Bannerman."
The cab started off jogging so sedately up Madison Avenue that Maitland
glanced at his watch and elevated his brows dubiously; then with his
stick poked open the trap in the roof.
"If you really think it best for me to go home, cabby, you'll have to
drive like hell," he suggested mildly.
"Yessir!"
A whip-lash cracked loudly over the horse's back, and the hansom,
lurching into Thirty-fourth Street on one wheel, was presently jouncing
eastward over rough cobbles, at a regardless pace which roused the
gongs of the surface cars to a clangor of hysterical expostulation. In
a trice the "L" extension was roaring overhead; and a little later the
ferry gates were yawning before them. Again Maitland consulted his
watch, commenting briefly: "In time."
Yet he reckoned without the ferry, one of whose employees deliberately
and implacably swung to the gates in the very face of the astonished
cab-horse, which promptly rose upon its hind legs and pawed the air
with gestures of pardonable exasperation. To no avail, however; the
gates remained closed, the cabby (with language) reined his steed back
a yard or two, and Maitland, lighting a cigarette, composed himself to
simulate patience.
Followed a wait of ten minutes or so, in which a number of vehicles
joined company with the cab; the passenger was vaguely aware of the
jarring purr of a motor-car, like that of some huge cat, in the
immediate rear. A circumstance which he had occasion to recall ere long.
In the course of time the gates were again opened. The bridge cleared
of incoming traffic. As the cabby drove aboard the boat, with nice
consideration selecting the choicest stand of all, well out upon the
forward deck, a motor-car slid in, humming, on the right of the hansom.
Maitland sat forward, resting his forearms on the apron, and jerked his
cigarette out over the gates; the glowing stub described a fiery arc
and took the water with a hiss. Warm whiffs of the river's sweet and
salty breath fanned his face gratefully, and he became aware that there
was a moon. His gaze roving at will, he nodded an even-tempered
approbation of the night's splendor: in the city a thing unsuspected.
Never, he thought, had he known moonlight so pure, so silvery and
strong. Shadows of gates and posts lay upon the forward deck like
stencils of lamp-black upon white marble. Beyond the boat's bluntly
rounded nose the East River stretched its restless, dark reaches,
glossy black, woven with gorgeous ribbons of reflected light streaming
from pier-head lamps on the further shore. Overhead, the sky, a pallid
and luminous blue around the low-swung moon, was shaded to profound
depths of bluish-black toward the horizon. Above Brooklyn rested a
tenuous haze. A revenue cutter, a slim, pale shape, cut across the bows
like a hunted ghost. Farther out a homeward-bound excursion steamer,
tier upon tier of glittering lights, drifted slowly toward its pier
beneath the new bridge, the blare of its band, swelling and dying upon
the night breeze, mercifully tempered by distance.
Presently Maitland's attention was distracted and drawn, by the abrupt
cessation of its motor's pulsing, to the automobile on his right. He
lifted his chin sharply, narrowing his eyes, whistled low; and
thereafter had eyes for nothing else.
The car, he saw with the experienced eye of a connoisseur, was a recent
model of one of the most expensive and popular foreign makes: built on
lines that promised a deal in the way of speed, and furnished with
engines that were pregnant with multiplied horse-power: all in all not
the style of car one would expect to find controlled by a solitary
woman, especially after ten of a summer's night.
Nevertheless the lone occupant of this car was a woman. And there was
that in her bearing, an indefinable something,--whether it lay in the
carriage of her head, which impressed one as both spirited and
independent, or in an equally certain but less tangible air of
self-confidence and reliance,--to set Mad Maitland's pulses drumming
with excitement. For, unless indeed he labored gravely under a
misapprehension, he was observing her for the second time within the
past few hours.
Could he be mistaken, or was this in truth the same woman who had (as
he believed) made herself free of his rooms that evening?
In confirmation of such suspicion he remarked her costume, which was
altogether worked out in soft shades of grey. Grey was the misty veil,
drawn in and daintily knotted beneath her chin, which lent her head and
face such thorough protection against prying glances; of grey suede
were the light gauntlets that hid all save the slenderness of her small
hands; and the wrap that, cut upon full and flowing lines, cloaked her
figure beyond suggestion, was grey. Yet even its ample drapery could
not dissemble the fact that she was quite small, girlishly slight, like
the woman in the doorway; nor did aught temper her impersonal and
detached composure, which had also been an attribute of the woman in
the doorway. And, again, she was alone, unchaperoned, unprotected....
Yes? Or no? And, if yes: what to do? Was he to alight and accost her,
accuse her of forcing an entrance to his rooms for the sole purpose (as
far as ascertainable) of presenting him with the outline of her hand in
the dust of his desk's top?... Oh, hardly! It was all very well to be
daringly eccentric and careless of the world's censure; but one
scarcely cared to lay one's self open either to an unknown girl's
derision or to a sound pummeling at the hands of fellow passengers
enraged by the insult offered to an unescorted woman....
The young man was still pondering ways and means when a dull bump
apprised him that the ferry-boat was entering the Long Island City
slip. "The devil!" he exclaimed in mingled disgust and dismay,
realizing that his distraction had been so thorough as to permit the
voyage to take place almost without his realizing it. So that
now--worse luck!--it was too late to take any one of the hundred
fantastic steps he had contemplated half seriously. In another two
minutes his charming mystery, so bewitchingly incarnated, would have
slipped out of his life, finally and beyond recall. And he could do
naught to hinder such a finale to the adventure.
Sulkily he resigned himself to the inevitable, waiting and watching,
while the boat slid and blundered clumsily, paddle-wheels churning the
filthy waters over side, to the floating bridge; while the winches
rattled, and the woman, sitting up briskly in the driver's seat of the
motor-car, bent forward and advanced the spark; while the chain fell
clanking and the car shot out, over the bridge, through the gates, and
away, at a very considerable, even if lawful, rate of speed.
Whereupon, writing _Finis_ to the final chapter of Romance, voting the
world a dull place and life a treadmill, anathematizing in no uncertain
terms his lack of resource and address, Maitland paid off his cabby,
alighted, and to that worthy's boundless wonder, walked into the
waiting-room of the railway terminus without deviating a hair's-breadth
from the straight and circumscribed path of the sober in mind and body.
The ten-twenty had departed by a bare two minutes. The next and last
train for Greenfields was to leave at ten-fifty-nine. Maitland with
assumed nonchalance composed himself upon a bench in the waiting-room
to endure the thirty-seven minute interval. Five minutes later an
able-bodied washerwoman with six children in quarter sizes descended
upon the same bench; and the young man in desperation allowed himself
to be dispossessed. The news-stand next attracting him, he garnered a
fugitive amusement and two dozen copper cents by the simple process of
purchasing six "night extras," which he did not want, and paying for
each with a five-cent piece. Comprehending, at length, that he had
irritated the news-dealer, he meandered off, jingling his
copper-fortune in one hand, lugging his newspapers in the other, and
made a determined onslaught upon a slot machine. The latter having
reluctantly disgorged twenty-four assorted samples of chewing-gum and
stale sweetmeats, Maitland returned to the washerwoman, and sowed
dissension in her brood by presenting the treasure-horde to the eldest
girl with instructions to share it with her brothers and sisters.
It is difficult to imagine what folly might next have been recorded
against him had not, at that moment, a ferocious and inarticulate howl
from the train-starter announced the fact that the ten-fifty-nine was
in waiting.
Boarding the train in a thankful spirit, Maitland settled himself as
comfortably as he might in the smoker and endeavored to find surcease
of ennui in his collection of extras. In vain: even a two-column
portrait of Mr. Dan Anisty, cracksman, accompanied by a vivacious
catalogue of that notoriety's achievements in the field of polite
burglary, hardly stirred his interest. An elusive resemblance which he
traced in the features of Mr. Anisty, as presented by the
Sketch-Artist-on-the-Spot, to some one whom he, Maitland, had known in
the dark backwards and abysm of time, merely drew from him the comment:
"Homely brute!" And he laid the papers aside, cradling his chin in the
palm of one hand and staring for a weary while out of the car window at
a reeling and moonsmitten landscape. He yawned exhaustively, his
thoughts astray between a girl garbed all in grey, Bannerman's earnest
and thoughtful face, and the pernicious activities of Mr. Daniel
Anisty, at whose door Maitland laid the responsibility for this most
fatiguing errand....
The brakeman's wolf-like yelp--"Greenfields!"--was ringing in his ears
when he awoke and stumbled down aisle and car-steps just in the nick of
time. The train, whisking round a curve cloaked by a belt of somber
pines, left him quite alone in the world, cast ruthlessly upon his own
resources.
An hour had elapsed; it was now midnight; the moon rode high, a cold
white disk against a background of sapphire velvet, its pellucid rays
revealing with disheartening distinctness the inanimate and lightless
roadside hamlet called Greenfields; its general store and postoffice,
its _soi-disant_ hotel, its straggling line of dilapidated habitations,
all wrapped in silence profound and impenetrable. Not even a dog
howled; not a belated villager was in sight; and it was a moral
certainty that the local livery service had closed down for the night.
Nevertheless, Maitland, with a desperation bred of the prospective
five-mile tramp, spent some ten valuable minutes hammering upon the
door of the house infested by the proprietor of the livery stable. He
succeeded only in waking the dog, and inasmuch as he was not on
friendly terms with that animal, presently withdrew at discretion and
set his face northwards upon the open road.
It stretched before him invitingly enough, a ribbon winding
silver-white between dark patches of pine and scrub-oak or fields lush
with rustling corn and wheat. And, having overcome his primary disgust,
as the blood began to circulate more briskly in his veins, Maitland
became aware that he was actually enjoying the enforced exercise. It
could have been hardly otherwise, with a night so sweet, with airs so
bland and fragrant of the woods and fresh-turned earth, with so clear a
light to show him his way.
He stepped out briskly at first, swinging his stick and watching his
shadow, a squat, incredibly agitated silhouette in the golden dust. But
gradually and insensibly the peaceful influences of that still and
lovely hour tempered his heart's impatience; and he found himself
walking at a pace more leisurely. After all, there was no hurry; he was
unwearied, and Maitland Manor lay less than five miles distant.
Thirty minutes passed; he had not covered a third of the way, yet
remained content. By well-remembered landmarks, he knew he must be
nearing the little stream called, by courtesy, Myannis River; and in
due course, he stepped out upon the long wooden structure that spans
that water. He was close upon the farther end when--upon a hapchance
impulse--he glanced over the nearest guard-rail, down at the bed of the
creek. And stopped incontinently, gaping.
Stationary in the middle of the depression, hub-deep in the shallow
waters, was a motor-car; and it, beyond dispute, was identical with
that which had occupied his thoughts on the ferry-boat. Less wonderful,
perhaps, but to him amazing enough, it was to discover upon the
driver's seat the girl in grey.
His brain benumbed beyond further capacity for astonishment, he
accepted without demur this latest and most astounding of the chain of
amazing coincidences which had thus far enlivened the night's earlier
hours; and stood rapt in silent contemplation, sensible that the girl
had been unaware of his approach, deadened as his footsteps must have
been by the blanket of dust that carpeted both road and bridge deep and
thick.
On her part she sat motionless, evidently lost in reverie, and
momentarily, at least, unconscious of the embarrassing predicament
which was hers. So complete, indeed, seemed her abstraction that
Maitland caught himself questioning the reality of her.... And well
might she have seemed to him a pale little wraith of the night, the
shimmer of grey that she made against the shimmer of light on the
water,--a shape almost transparent, slight, and unsubstantial--seeming
to contemplate, and as still as any mouse....
Looking more attentively, it became evident that her veil was now
raised. This was the first time that he had seen her so. But her
countenance remained so deeply shadowed by the visor of a mannish
motoring-cap that the most searching scrutiny gained no more than a dim
and scantily satisfactory impression of alluring loveliness.
Maitland turned noiselessly, rested elbows on the rail, and, staring,
framed a theory to account for her position, if not for her patience.
On either hand the road, dividing, struck off at a tangent, down the
banks and into the river-bed. It was credible to presume that the girl
had lost control of the machine temporarily and that it, taking the bit
between its teeth, had swung gaily down the incline to its bath.
Why she lingered there, however, was less patent. The water, as has
been indicated, was some inches below the tonneau; it did not seem
reasonable to assume that it should have interfered with either
running-gear or motor....
At this point in Maitland's meditations the grey girl appeared to have
arrived at a decision. She straightened up suddenly, with a little
resolute nod of her head, lifting one small foot to her knee, and
fumbled with the laces of her shoe.
Maitland grasped her intention to abandon the machine, with her
determination to wade! Clearly this would seem to demonstrate that
there had been a breakdown, irreparable so far as frail feminine hands
were concerned.
One shoe removed, its fellow would follow, and then.... Out of sheer
chivalry, the involuntary witness was moved to earnest protest.
"Don't!" he cried hastily. "I say, don't wade!"
Her superb composure claimed his admiration. Absolutely ignorant though
she had been of his proximity, the voice from out of the skies
evidently alarmed her not at all. Still bending over the lifted foot,
she turned her head slowly and looked up; and "Oh!" said a small voice
tinged with relief. And coolly knotting the laces again, she sat up. "I
didn't hear you, you know."
"Nor I see you," Maitland supplemented unblushingly, "until a moment
ago. I--er--can I be of assistance?"
"Can't you?"
"Idiot!" said Maitland severely, both to and of himself. Aloud: "I
think I can."
"I hope so,"--doubtfully. "It's very unfortunate. I ... was running
rather fast, I suppose, and didn't see the slope until too late.
_Now_," opening her hands in a gesture ingenuously charming with its
suggestion of helplessness and dependence, "I don't know what _can_ be
the matter with the machine."
"I'm coming down," announced Maitland briefly. "Wait."
"Thank you, I shall."
She laughed, and Maitland could have blushed for his inanity; happily
he had action to cloak his embarrassment. In a twinkling he was at the
water's edge, pausing there to listen, with admirable docility, to her
plaintive objection: "But you'll get wet and--and ruin your things. I
can't ask that of you."
He chuckled, by way of reply, slapping gallantly into the shallows and
courageously wading out to the side of the car. Whereupon he was
advised in tones of fluttered indignation:
"You simply _wouldn't_ listen to me! And I _warned_ you! Now you're
soaking wet and will certainly catch your death of cold, and--and what
can _I_ do? Truly, I am sorry...."
Here the young man lost track of her remark. He was looking up into the
shadow of the motoring-cap, discovering things; for the shadow was set
at naught by the moon luster that, reflected from the surface of the
stream, invested with a gentle and glamorous radiance the face that
bent above him. And he caught at his breath sharply, direst fears
confirmed: she was pretty indeed--perilously pretty. The firm, resolute
chin, the sensitive, sweet line of scarlet lips, the straight little
nose, the brows delicately arched, the large, alert, tawny eyes with
the dangerous sweet shadows beneath, the glint as of raw copper where
her hair caught the light--Maitland appreciated them all far too well;
and clutched nervously the rail of the seat, trying to steady himself,
to re-collect his routed wits and consider sensibly that it all was due
to the magic of the moon, belike; the witchery of this apparition that
looked down into his eyes so gravely.
"Of course," he mumbled, "it's too beautiful to endure. Of course it
will all fade, vanish utterly in the cold light of day...."