Following Mr. Cornelius, Dangerfield went down the hall for an
examination. At the bottom, he remained skeptical, despite “the
baron’s” assurance that the window had been locked and that the
catch was now sprung. There were scratches on the surface of the
iron lock of the chest and a spot of oil on the floor beside it.
“The baron” was in a high state of excitement. The window-latch, he
insisted, could have been sprung by an ordinary knife.
“But there are only two other rooms which give on the roof,” said
Dangerfield; “Miss Quirley’s----”
“No; not that.”
“And Drinkwater’s, which has been empty for weeks.”
“Perhaps.”
“That is certain.”
“If so--why, then, don’t they put it in rent again?” said Mr.
Cornelius, shaking his head. Nothing could convince him that an
attempted burglary had not taken place. In fact, he confided the
fact that he had several times had a suspicion that attempts had
taken place before.
To Dangerfield, the proof seemed slight--what was there in the
denuded room to entice a thief? But, in order to humor the old
fellow, he nodded wisely and promised to aid him with a careful
search on the morrow.
He left him and went back to his room, but the tyranny of insomnia
still holding him, he changed into slippers, opened the door and,
in an effort at physical fatigue, began to walk the long murky
corridor. Alone, in his mechanical journey, back and forth, along
the creaky way, wheeling at the same points so mechanically that he
fell to counting his steps, he saw all at once, under the door of
Inga’s room, a tiny ray of light come out. She was there, awake;
she had heard him--was waiting, perhaps, wrung by the same torture
which dominated him, feeling the same ache of separation. She was
there--waiting!
His imagination began to whirl again. He had an impulse to break
through things, to fling obstacles aside, to hurl down all that
intervened; and yet he hesitated. A dozen times he approached the
door in an angry revulsion against his self-imposed test, and a
dozen times passed on. Once he stopped, leaning against the wall,
staring at the knob, which seemed to turn under his eyes. She was
there, she must be there, waiting miserably. The sensation was so
acute that he felt her living, breathing presence on the other side
of the door, her hand waiting on the knob that seemed to turn under
his eyes! And yet he went away and continued up and down the hall,
staring at the same points, counting the steps--up and down--until
the sickly dawn flowed in like an inundation, and still the crack
under her door shone like the blazing edge of a sword blade....
* * * * *
The next afternoon, his model dismissed in despair, Dangerfield
sat, head in his hands, staring at the meaningless canvas. He could
not work. He had not worked since the day he had sent Inga out of
his life.
The drag of sleepless hours lay on him, and the profound void of
the victory he had won in the long marches of the night. Sitting
there, in graven silence, he asked himself:
“Why didn’t I go in?”
And when he had put the question to himself again and again, he
understood. He had not yielded, because the need of the inspiration
of a great love in his life was deeper than his need of love
itself, because in the fulness of his maturity he comprehended
that, in his artist’s ideality, only a love that meant aspiration
and veneration could restore life to him, and that this love he
must protect and hold sacred even against itself.
It was not that he did not comprehend the essential innocence of
the girl’s offer, or the nobility of her courage, but that, deeper
than his intellectual comprehension, he knew that in him a moral
fire existed which he had not suspected until the love which had
impelled him with longing to the charming figure of the girl had
illuminated its depths. Despite all his reasons, despite a mental
defiance of conventions, he knew that what called to him from a
hidden consciousness was unselfishness, and by that token he knew,
too, how much his whole being, his day, and his hope of the future
loved and clung to her.
What had she felt these miserable days? He knew that she, too,
had suffered. He had seen it in the stricken tensity of her
silent, deep eyes, when they had passed in the hall, or when
they had met in Tootles’ studio, where she went often now, to be
near him silently, no doubt. And between them what a ridiculous
barrier intervened--a distorted conception of liberty, born in the
intimate tragedy of the past, fed by the ill-considered doctrines
of the day--Yet at times he wondered if that were all, if there
were not, below her avowed reasons, causes he could not divine.
What did he know about her? The longer he had known her, the
deeper into the mists her figure had receded. A few hints she had
dropped--of her home, of her father; a few scraps of gossip about
the young sculptor who had been here before him; a few indications;
Costello’s recognition in the dance-hall; the haunting feeling,
which had come to him in his days of distress, that there was
something in all his exactions and struggles which was not new
to her; the strange feeling that had possessed him at times that
some one else was present at their side; her own calm insistence
that what had passed before did not touch them now--all these
confusing memories closed behind her, forbidding the return toward
the past as though with impenetrable velvet folds of oblivion.
Yet the strangeness of it all fascinated him--the audacity that
had borne her where she was, the untamed pride which lingered in
the slow-breaking, confident smile that suffused the room and his
being with happiness; the echoes of hidden waters which sounded
in her low, modulated voice, that had power to dispel hot fevers
and bring him the cool of tranquillity, as though gentle fingers
had passed across his forehead; the steady depths of the sea-blue
eyes, which had looked gravely out upon the storm and the sunshine
of life--all this had him in its cruel-sweet spell. His ears heard
nothing but remembered echoes, and his eyes were clouded with the
obsession of one figure, slender and supple, with the grace of an
untamed animal, whose motions were like the rhythm of sweet sounds.
He suffered so keenly the torture of these eluding charms that he
sprang up with a groan, crying her name, and, all at once, he saw
her there in the room, like a shadow, gazing down at him.
He did not dare to speak. He stood silently, his glance fastened on
hers, across the little lapse of golden carpet which lay between
them like stretches and stretches of space. He did not dare to
speak; he was afraid of what her first words would bring, and this
nameless terror was so overwhelming that at last he fell back in
his chair and covered his face with his hands.
Then he was faintly aware that she was speaking, that her body was
swaying toward him, like a perfume spreading through the room.
“Mr. Dan, I can’t--I can’t bear it!”
The next moment he had sprung up; she was in his arms, her head
pressed against his shoulder, trembling like a child, crying:
“Oh, no, I can’t bear it; I can’t bear to see you suffer.”
“Yes; that is true,” he said solemnly--waiting.
“I was there last night behind the door,” she said, in a whisper.
“Oh, why didn’t you call me?”
“Why didn’t you come?” he said, with a quick breath.
Her lips moved as though she were about to speak, and then stopped.
“You were not serious, that was not the true reason--what you said
about marriage,” he said tumultuously.
She disengaged herself from his arms and raised her eyes to his
face, furrowed with the sleepless pain which she had drawn across
it. She looked at him thus, a long wait, her lip wavering. Then she
said, without averting her eyes:
“Must it be so? You still insist?”
His answer was a cry, inarticulate, wrung from him despite his
effort at control, at finding her still unreconciled.
“Wait,” she said hastily. She looked away from him and then down
and about her forehead and the slender lips the lines drew in
hardness. “I can’t; I cannot see you suffer. I know that--that is
all I know!” she said desperately, and she flung back her head as
though flinging sudden tears from her eyes.
“Inga!” he burst out, but she stopped him quietly, her fingers over
his lips.
“I will do as you wish,” she said firmly, “on one condition.” She
seemed to be thinking a moment, and all at once she continued
rapidly. “You are an honorable man--I know that--I knew that last
night--you will do what you say you will do. Look at me, Mr. Dan;
promise me on your honor, that whenever I come to you and ask
you--you will give me back my liberty, that you will set me free.”
“Whenever?” he said slowly, staring at her.
She hesitated, and her eyes seemed searching into his with faraway
questioning.
“_If_ I come to you, then,” she said carefully.
“If you ever come to me with such a demand,” he said slowly, “I
shall do everything to give you back your freedom. That is a
promise. I would have done so, anyhow.”
She nodded as though satisfied. Then with a dignity that held him
breathless, she placed her hand on his and said as though to her
the words constituted a ceremony,
“Mr. Dan, your life will be my life. I will have no other thought
but you in my heart--and no other desire but to give you what is in
me to give.”
“Then--you will marry me,” he said slowly.
“Whenever you wish.”
“This is final, Inga? You will not change?”
“You did not understand,” she said quietly. “Nothing a stranger can
say can make me more yours than I am now.”
“And you love me?” he cried tempestuously. “Inga, that is what
I want to hear you say. You love me so that you can’t think of
anything else, so that you can’t keep from me, so that to be out of
my sight is torture?”
She caught her breath at the frenzy in his voice.
“Would I be here if I didn’t?” she said.
He stood away from her a moment, scanning her tense face greedily,
satisfied at last. Yes; she loved him, beyond her pride, beyond
her stubborn beliefs, beyond her fears even! She loved him so that
nothing stood against his need that cried out for her!
He put out his arms, swept away by a confusing intoxication. She
seemed to sink into his embrace, the moist, warm lips, half parted,
which met his, were almost lifeless in their sudden frailty, but
the hands against his throat were like ice. He hung on this first
kiss as though in it lay his salvation; a strange, terrifying
contact in which he seemed to be drawing her up to him, taking from
her not only all her love but all her strength, all her youth,
all the pulsing vigor of her body, its softness and its freshness
to quicken his tired veins. He had taken everything, and yet it
seemed to him that she had given nothing. He lifted her face to
his, gazing into it with a hunger that had awakened never to be
satisfied. Her lips were smiling, but in her eyes was the sadness
of renunciation, the melancholy of the gray sea when the heavy
winter weighs upon the land, and the bitter mists creep across the
face of the day--the sadness of the sea that holds the secrets of
time.
“Ah, Inga,” he cried, with sudden divination, “don’t look like
that! Believe me, it’ll be you, only you--all my life!”
She looked into his eyes and smiled, and while she smiled, the
tears rose and fell.