"I hardly know," he confessed with a deprecatory laugh. "More, at least,
than this: that it has seldom been my fortune to be so haunted without
something in the nature of a sequel."
She made a mental shudder graphic. "In this instance, for your sake, I
trust the rule will not hold good."
"I hope so, indeed. I entertain the least inclination imaginable to
better my acquaintance with that monsieur. And yet, it would surprise me
not at all if I were to see much more of him before I see less."
There was music again, a retrograde movement from tables to open floor.
"Why so mysterious, Michael?"
"Upon my word, I can't tell you. Why did you shiver when you spoke of
the fellow? Blame it, if you like, to that sixth sense, that instinct of
self-preservation which serves some men as intuition serves most
women--call it what you will, I have quite definitely a feeling I am no
more done with that one whom I do not know than I am as yet begun with
him."
A sidelong glance discovered the personage in question indulging in one
of his rare smiles, an introspective smile that might mean he had indeed
been reading Lanyard's lips, or might mean nothing of the sort. True,
that he was no longer looking at Lanyard; it remained equally true that
he was apparently paying no attention to the conversation of his
company.
"And that is why"--a derisive shift of the woman's eyes indicated the
quarter of the room in which the subject of their speculations had
established himself--"you are trying to jilt me--is it?--and excusing
your ungallant conduct with vague references to the 'hazards' of your
life!"
Lanyard shook his head, again possessed by the gravity of his purpose.
"I am scarcely so childish," he said. "But for days--for months, indeed,
but especially in these last few days--I have been thinking of the life
I have to offer a wife, the life of a man hunted, without fortune or
position, friendless in a strange land but for you."
"'Hunted'?"
The echo deprecated the strength of that term, but he would not modify
it. "Hunted," he reiterated: "the life of an outlaw. Society does not
forgive: it will sometimes applaud a successful transgressor, but it
never has patience with the penitent."
"Tell me why you say that, Michael. I have the right to know."
"It is this, then," Lanyard said with reluctance: "wherever I go, I am a
marked man. The world wears mocking eyebrows when it hears that the Lone
Wolf no longer prowls. 'Perhaps, today,' it says: 'but wait. Let him
prove his sincerity and fortitude against the dead drag of my
indifference, let him make his way if he can, I have my own affairs to
busy me.' . . . The police are satisfied my change of character is
merely a blind. Another class, even more skeptic, is made up of those
whose lot today is as mine was yesterday, creatures of envy, greed, and
uncharitableness, all those qualities that make criminals. These, should
they see me in rags, would say: 'Another turn or two of the screw and he
will be one of us again.' Seeing me apparently prosperous, they say:
'Observe that he wants for nothing: he is cunning, that one.' Or suppose
some unknown makes a famous coup; the chorus is then: 'The Lone Wolf has
done this thing!' . . . Society indifferent, its police distrustful, its
enemies envious: one needs strength to make way against so strong a
tide!"
"You have it."
"But will it last?"
"With mine to comfort and encourage you when your strength
wearies . . ."
"But figure to yourself a possible event: We marry. What happens? Your
friends are affronted, they turn from you--"
"Did you call them friends?"
"Even friendship fails when its self-esteem is flouted. . . . You are
left alone," Lanyard obstinately pursued, "but for me. And for every
friend you have lost, you have found an enemy--my enemies. These good
haters of mine will resort to every expedient to poison your mind
against me, while to me they will come saying, 'Do as we bid you or
prepare yourself to see her suffer.' Conceive me mad enough to tell them
to go to the devil: the next time we find ourselves conspicuously placed
in public, a hand falls on my shoulder, I your husband am arrested on a
trumped-up charge. Assume that I clear myself: still the disgrace
remains, the shame. And I its cause. . . . No! never ask me to condemn
you to a life like that."
He sat brooding, in a silence which she respected for a little, watching
him with shrewd vision all the while.
"Something has happened," she said at length, "to make you think such
things."
"You are right." He nodded sadly: "I have come to my senses. These
months I have spent in almost daily association with you have been the
happiest of my life. I have been too happy . . . They can't continue: I
love you too well."
The plumed fan was arrested, the woman's eyes grew wide and dark, her
breathing quickened. "What do you propose?"
"I think you must know . . ."
"Tell me!"
He entreated her with haggard eyes. "Since we may not marry, what else
can I do but go my way?"
"No!" she impatiently countered. "There is something more in your mind
than you have told me."
"Neither there nor in my heart."
"You are keeping something back for fear of frightening me: some danger
threatens you--!"
"Nothing."
"Nevertheless you have reason to fear--"
"I have always to be on my guard. Misfortune visits in strange guises,
and most often unannounced. For myself, I am accustomed to that; I do
not greatly care. But for you--that is another matter."
The fan resumed its weaving. After a pause Eve said: "If you must go, so
be it. But 'whither thou goest, there go I'--"
"No!"
"It matters not how far," she nodded. "What is it to me where I live, so
I am with you?"
"Can you require that of me?"
"I!" she cried, startled--"of _you_?"
"You are a woman of this world, Eve. Do I not know? Can I forget how you
were when I found you, buried to life in that isolate château half a
hundred years to the south of Paris? Can I not see what a change has
come over you in these few months of your own New York?"
"Of you--"
But he would not listen. "You were born and bred to breathe this
atmosphere. Can you ask me to doom you to exile in some hole or corner,
some place so lost that the whisper of my ill fame will not find it?
Some kraal in South Africa!----an iron hut in the Australian
bush!--where else? . . . You would die of such a life, or live only to
learn to hate me."
"Never that. Love outweighs all."
"So we tell ourselves, so we believe, till we are required to lay down
for love even our self-respect. Could I retain that--could I forgive
myself--knowing I had robbed you of all that had made life fair for you,
and left you only the happiness of giving up your life for love?"
"Selfishness speaks there . . ."
"Vanity, the father of selfishness, is present in every human affair. It
is not a pretty thought; but men and women in this world are made that
way. There is my vanity, too, to be thought of." Lanyard had a wry,
apologetic smile. "Consider that you have never known a want you could
not gratify out of your private means; while I am a penniless
adventurer, a man living from hand to mouth, today on a modest pension,
tomorrow on God knows what . . ."
"At last!" said Eve de Montalais: "it is that, then, your pride that
stands between us."
"A man with less is not a man whom you could love."
She made no direct reply, but after a time sat up and began to gather
round her the folds of her wrap.
"I am a little weary," she told Lanyard. "There is more to be said than
you have said, my Michael! but not now, not here . . . Perhaps another
night . . . Please take me home."