It was a sumptuous library in which Gila Dare awaited the coming of Paul
Courtland.
Great, deep, red-leather chairs stood everywhere invitingly, the floor
was spread with a magnificent specimen of Royal Bokhara, the rich
recesses of the noble walls were lined with books in rare editions, a
heavily carved table of dull black wood from some foreign land sprawled
in the center of the room and held a great bronze lamp of curious
pattern, bearing a ruby light. Ornate bronzes lurked on pedestals in
shadows, unexpectedly, and caught the eye alarmingly, like grim ones set
to watch. A throbbing fire like the heart of a lit ruby burned in a
massive fireplace of grotesque tiles, as though it were the opening into
great depths of unquenchable fire to which this room might be but an
approach.
Gila herself, slight, dark-eyed, with pearl-white skin and dusky hair,
was dressed in crimson velvet, soft and clinging like chiffon, catching
the light and shimmering it with strange effect. The dark hair was
curiously arranged, and stabbed just above her ears with two dagger-like
combs flashing with jewels. A single jewel burned at her throat on an
invisible chain, and jewels flashed from the little pointed
crimson-satin slippers, setting off the slim ankles in their
crimson-silk covering. The whole effect was startling. One wondered why
she had chosen so elaborate a costume to waste upon a single college
student.
She stood with one dainty foot poised on the brass trappings of the
hearth. In her short skirts she seemed almost a child; so sweet the
droop of the pretty lips; so innocent the dark eyes as they looked into
the fire; so soft the shadows that played in the dark hair! And yet, as
she turned to listen for a step in the hall, there was something
gleaming, sinister, in those dark eyes, something mocking in the red
lips. She might have been a daughter of Satan as she stood, the
firelight picking out those jeweled horns and slippers.
"Leave him to me," she had said to her cousin when he told her how the
brilliant young athlete and intellectual star of the university had been
stung by the religious bug. "Send him to me. I'll take it out of him and
he'll never know it's gone."
Paul Courtland entered, unsuspecting. He had met Gila a number of times
before, at college dances and the games. He was not exactly flattered,
but decidedly pleased that she had sent for him. Her brightness and
seeming innocence had attracted him strongly.
The contrast from the hall with its blaze of electrics to the lurid
light of the library affected him strangely. He paused on the threshold
and passed his hand over his eyes. Gila stood where the ruby light of
hearth and lamp would set her vivid dress on fire and light the jewels
at her throat and hair. She knew her clear skin, dark hair, and eyes
would bear the startling contrast, and how her white shoulders gleamed
from the crimson velvet. She knew how to arrange the flaming scarf of
gauze deftly about those white shoulders so that it would reveal more
than it concealed.
The young man lingered unaccountably. He had a sense of leaving
something behind him. Almost he hesitated as she came forward to greet
him, and looked back as if to rid himself of some obligation. Then she
put her bits of confiding hands out to him and smiled that wistful,
engaging smile that would have been worth a fortune on the screen.
He thrilled with wonder over her delicate, dazzling beauty; and felt the
luxury of the room about him, responding to its lure.
"So dandy of you to come to me when you are so busy after your long
illness." Her voice was soft and confiding, its cadences like soothing
music. She motioned him to a chair. "You see, I wanted to have you all
to myself for a little while, just to tell you how perfectly fine you
were at that awful fire."
She dropped upon the couch drawn out at just the right angle from the
fire and settled among the cushions gracefully. The flicker of the
firelight played upon the jeweled combs and gleamed at her throat. The
little pointed slippers cozily crossed looked innocent enough to have
been meant for the golden street. Her eyes looked up into his with that
confiding lure that thrills and thrills again.
Her voice dropped softer, and she turned half away and gazed pensively
into the fire on the hearth. "I wouldn't let them talk to me about it.
It seemed so awful. And you were so strong and great."
"It was nothing!" He did not want to talk about the fire. There was
something incongruous, almost unholy, in having it discussed here. It
jangled on his nerves. For there in front of him in the fireplace burned
a mimic pit like the one into which the martyr Steve had fallen; and
there before him on the couch sat the girl! What was there so familiar
about her? Ah! now he knew. The Scarlet Woman! Her gown was an exact
reproduction of the one the great actress had worn on the stage that
night. He was conscious of wishing to sit beside her on that couch and
revel in the ravishing color of her. What was there about this room
that made all his pulses beat?
Playfully, skilfully, she led him on. They talked of the dances and
games, little gossip of the university, with now and then a telling
personality, and a sweep of long lashes over pearly cheeks, or a lifting
of great, innocent eyes of admiration to his face.
She offered wine in delicate gold-incrusted ruby glasses, but Courtland
did not drink. He scarcely noticed her veiled annoyance at his refusal.
He was drinking in the wine of her presence. She suggested that he
smoke, and would not have hesitated to join him, perhaps, but he told
her he was in training, and she cooed softly of his wonderful strength
of character in resisting.
By this time he was in the coveted seat beside her on the couch, and the
fire burned low and red. They had ceased to talk of games and dances.
They were talking of each other, those intimate nothings that mean a
breaking down of distance and a rapidly growing familiarity.
The young man was aware of the fascination of the small figure in her
crimson robings, sitting so demurely in the firelight, the gauzy scarf
dropped away from her white neck and shoulders, the lovely curve of her
baby cheek and tempting neck showing against the background of the
shadows behind her. He was aware of a distinct longing to take her in
his arms and crush her to him, as he would pluck a red berry from a
bank, and feel its stain upon his lips. Stain! A stain was a thing that
was hard to remove. There were blood-stains sometimes and agonies; and
yet men wanted to pluck the berries and feel the stain upon their lips!
He was not under the hallucination that he was suddenly falling in love
with this girl. He did not name the passionate outcry in his soul love.
He knew she had been a charmer of many, and in yielding himself to her
recognized power he was for the moment playing with a force that was new
and interesting, with which he had felt altogether strong enough to
contend for an evening or he would not have come. That it should thrill
along all his senses with this unreasoning rapture was most astonishing.
He had never been a fellow to "fall" for every girl he met, and now he
felt himself gradually yielding to the beautiful spell about him with a
kind of wonder.
The lights and coloring of the room that had smote his senses
unpleasantly when he first entered had thrown him now into a kind of
delicious fever. The neglected wine sparkling dimly in the costly
glasses seemed a part of it. He felt an impulse to reach out, seize a
glass, and drain it. What if he should? What if he flung away his ideas
and principles and let the moment sway him as it would, just for once?
Why should he not try life as it presented itself?
These fancies fled through his brain like phantoms that did not dare to
linger. His was no callow mind, ignorant of the world. He had thought
and read and lived his ideas well for so young a man. He had vigorously
protested against weakness of every kind; yet here he was feeling the
drawing power of things he had always despised; reveling in the wine-red
color of the room, in the pit-like glow of the fire; watching the play
of smiles and wistfulness on the lovely face of the girl. He had often
wondered what others saw so attractive in her beyond a pretty face. But
now he understood. Her child-like speech and pretty little ways
fascinated him. Perhaps she was really innocent of her own charms.
Perhaps a man might lead her to give up certain of her ways that caused
her to be criticized. What a woman she would be then! What a friend to
have!
This was the last sop he threw to his conscience before he consciously
began to yield to the spell that was upon him.
She had been speaking of palmistry, and she took his hand in hers,
innocently, impersonally, with large eyes lifted inquiringly. Her breath
was on his face; her touch had stirred his senses with a madness he had
never felt nor measured in himself before.
"The life-line is here," she said, coolly, and traced it delicately
along his palm with a sea-shell tinted finger. Like cool delicious fire
it spread from nerve to nerve and set aside his reason in a frenzy. He
would seize the berry and feel its stain upon his lips now no matter
what!--
"Paul!"
It was as distinct upon his ear as if the words had been spoken; as
startling and calming as a cool hand upon his fevered brow; the sudden
entrance of a guest. He had seized her hands with sudden fervor, and
now, almost in the same moment, flung them from him and stood up, a man
in full possession of his senses. "Hark!" he said, and as he spoke a cry
broke faintly forth above them, and there was sound of rushing feet. A
frightened maid burst into the room unannounced.
"Oh, Miss Gila, I beg yer pardon, but Master Harry's got his father's
razor, an' he's cut hisself something awful."
The maid was weeping and wringing her hands helplessly, but Gila stood
frowning angrily. Courtland sprang up the stairs. In the tumult of his
mind he would have rejoiced if the house had been on fire, or a cyclone
had struck the place--anything so he could fling himself into service.
He drew in long, deep breaths. It was like mountain air to get away from
that lurid room into the light once more. A sense of lost power
returned, was over him. The spell was broken.
He bent over the little boy alertly, grasped the wrist, and stopped the
spurt of blood. The frightened child looked up into his face and stopped
crying.
"You should have telephoned for the doctor at once and not made all this
fuss in the presence of a guest," scolded Gila as she came up the
stairs. She looked garish and out of place with her red velvet and
jewels in the brilliant light of the white-tiled bathroom. She stood
helplessly by the door, making no move to help Courtland. The maid was
at the telephone, frantically calling for the family physician.
"Hand me those towels," commanded Courtland, and saw the look of disgust
upon Gila's face as she reluctantly picked her way across the
blood-stains. It struck him that they were the color of her frock. The
stain of the crushed berry. He moistened his dry lips. At least the
stain was not upon his lips. He had escaped. Yet by how narrow a margin.
The girl felt the man's changed attitude without in the least
understanding it. She thought it had been the cry of the child that made
him jump up and fling her hands from him with that sudden "Hark!" in the
moment when he had almost yielded. She did not know that an inner voice
had called him. She only knew that she had lost him for the time, and
her vanity was still panting like a wild thing that has lost its prey.
He gathered the little boy into his arms when he had bound up the cut,
and talked to him cheerfully. The child's curly head rested trustfully
against the big shoulder.
"Floor all bluggy!" he remarked, languidly. "Wall all bluggy!" Then his
eyes fell on his sister in her scarlet frock. "Gila all bluggy, too!" he
laughed, and pointed with his well hand.
"Be still, Harry!" said Gila, sharply, and when Courtland looked up in
wonder he saw the delicate brows drawn blackly, and the mouth had lost
its innocent sweetness. The child shrank in his arms, and he put a
reassuring hand upon the little head that snuggled comfortedly against
his coat. It was one of Courtland's strong points, this love of little
children. He grew fine and gentle in their presence. It often drew
attention on the athletic field when some little fellow strayed his way
and Courtland would turn to talk to the child. People would stop their
conversation and look his way; and a whole grand stand would come to
silence just to see him walk across the diamond with a little
golden-haired kid upon his shoulder. There was something inexpressibly
beautiful about his attitude toward a child.
Gila saw it now and wondered. What unexpected trait was this that sat
upon the young man like a crown? Here, indeed, was a man who was worth
cultivating, not merely for the caprice of the moment. There was
something in his face and attitude now that commanded her respect and
admiration; something that drew her as she had not been drawn before.
She would win him now for his own sake, not just to show how she could
charm away his morbid fancies.
She continued to stare at the young man with eyes that saw new things in
him, while Courtland sat petting the child and telling him a story. He
paid no further attention to her.
When Gila set her heart upon a thing she had always had it. This had
been her father's method of bringing her up. Her mother was too busy
with her clubs and her social functions to see the harm. And now Gila
suddenly became aware that she was setting her heart upon this young
man. The eternal feminine in her that was almost choked with selfishness
was crying out for a man like this one to comfort and pet her the way he
was comforting and petting her little brother. That he had not yielded
too easily to her charms made him all the more desirable. The
interruption had come so suddenly that she couldn't even be sure he had
been about to take her hands in his when he flung them from him. He had
sprung from the couch almost as if he had been under orders. She could
not understand it, only she knew she was drawn by it all.
But he should yield! She had power and she would use it. She had beauty
and it should wound him. She would win that gentle deference and
attention for her own. In her jealous, spoiled, little heart she hated
the little brother for lying there in his arms so, interrupting their
evening just when she had him where she had wanted him. Whether she
wanted him for more than a plaything she did not know, but her plaything
he should be as long as she desired him--and more also if she chose.
When Courtland lifted his head at the sound of the doctor's footsteps on
the stairs he saw the challenge in Gila's eyes. Drawn up against the
white enamel of the bathroom door, all her brilliant velvet and jewels
gleaming in the brightness of the room, her regal little head up, her
chin lifted half haughtily, her innocent mouth pursed softly with
determination, her eyes wide with an inscrutable look--something more
than challenge--something soft, appealing, alluring, that stirred him
and drew him and repelled him all in one.
With a sense of something stronger than he was back of him, he lifted
his own chin and hardened his eyes in answering challenge. He did not
know it, of course, but he wore the look that he always had when about
to meet a foe in a game--a look of strength and concealed power that
nearly always made the coming foe quake when he saw it.
He shrank from going back to that red room again, or from being alone
with her; and when she would have had him return to the library he
declined, urging studies and an examination on the morrow. She received
his somewhat brusque reply with a hurt look, her mouth drooped
grievedly, and her eyes took on a wide, child-like look of distress that
gave an impression of innocence. He went away wondering if, after all,
he had not misjudged her. Perhaps she was only an adorable child who had
no idea of the effect her artlessness had upon men. She certainly was
lovely--wonderful! And yet the last glimpse he had of her had left that
impression of jeweled horns and scarlet, pointed toes. He had to get
away and think it out calmly before he went again. Oh yes, he was going
_again_. He had promised her at the last moment.
The sense of having escaped something fateful was passing already. The
coolness of the night and the quiet of the starlight had calmed him. He
thought he had been a fool not to have stayed a little longer when she
asked him so prettily; and he must go soon again.