Philip!”
He had been so absorbed in his thoughts that he had not noticed how she
had stolen up behind him. Without removing his arms from the rail, he
turned slowly and surveyed her.
An enviable woman! And her age? Perhaps thirty. She was probably a
Slav--either Russian or Polish. Her face was smooth as marble, high
cheekboned and golden in complexion. Her eyes were almond-shaped,
heavy-lidded, and of the palest gray. Her lips were passionate and
always a little parted, revealing a line of perfect whiteness like a
streak of snow between the curling edges of two rose-petals. But it was
her hair that was her glory--abundant as night, blue-black as steel, and
polished as metal. She wore it simply, gathered back from her forehead
and caught in a loose knot, low against her neck. There was an air of
indefinable aristocracy about her; perhaps it was the slightness of her
figure and the alert composure of her carriage. And then there was a
touch of the exotic, wistfully sad, yet exceedingly mocking. Like so
many Slavs, behind the European there lurked a hint of the Asiatic.
If her eyes had been darker, she might easily have passed for a Hindoo
princess.
Her fascination, quite apart from her beauty, lay in the fact that she
was so ravishingly feminine. To be a woman was her proud profession--and
in this again she was Asiatic. What hours she must have spent over
pampering her body! She was sleek and groomed as a race-horse.
Physically she was the last word in feminine perfection. Her string
of pearls was worth more than most men earn in a lifetime. Her sables
represented the year's income of a millionaire. There was no item of her
attire that was not sumptuous and that had not been acquired regardless
of expense. To have achieved her luxuriance of beauty must have
dissipated a fortune. Whose fortune? Surely, not hers!
His mind was haunted by misgivings as he watched her. He had so nearly
allowed himself to care for her. It was only her lightness and
willful inconsiderateness that had prevented. But now that he had been
prevented, her employment of his Christian name struck him as singularly
inappropriate. It made him suspect a trap. It put him in a mood to
interpret any tenderness on her part as strategy, as a signal that
something was wanted.
While he eyed her in silence, she drew nearer and leaned across the
rail. Her shoulder pressed him. He was aware of the tingling sensation
of her warmth, like a little hand caressing. He caught her fragrance,
secret and somnolent as the magic of hidden rose-gardens in Damascus.
She spoke. Her voice was deep and foreign; it seemed too deep to be pent
in so slight a body. It was harsh in many of its tones, as though there
had been times when it had been parched with thirst. It conjured visions
of caravans creeping across molten deserts. It was hypnotic, barbaric.
In listening to it, he lost sight of the exquisite sophistication of her
appearance. His imagination reclothed her, loosening her hair, veiling
her face, shrouding her in a robe of gold and saffron, slipping sandals
on her feet and making her ankles tinkle with many bangles.
“You don't like me any more. Is it not so?” she questioned softly. “My
master is offended.”
He shook himself irritably, as though he were flinging off the yoke of
her attraction. “I'm not offended. I was thinking.”
“About what?”
“Prince Rogovich.”
“And why should my master be thinking of Prince Rogovich?”
He leaned still further across the rail in an instinctive effort to
avoid her. There was seduction in the feigned humility with which she
addressed him, as though he were a Pasha and she a slave-girl.
“Because,” he said, “it would be indecent for me to be thinking of
anything else. He may be dead. There's no knowing. This time last night
I could walk and talk and laugh with him. He was full of plans. He was
something real that I could touch. To-night he has vanished.”
“Vanished!” She repeated the word with a sigh which was almost of
contentment.
“I was wondering,” he continued, and then halted. “You were wondering?”
she prompted.
Drawing himself erect, he faced her. Her bantering tone had roused his
indignation. Yet, even in his revulsion, he thrilled to the sweetness of
her luring eyes, glinting at him palely through the shadows.
“He was more your friend, much more your friend, than mine,” he
reproached her. “There's probably been a tragedy. Yet you don't seem to
care. One might even believe you were glad.”
“Not glad. Not exactly.” She spoke smilingly, averting her eyes. “But as
for caring--why should I?”
He laughed quietly. “Yes, why should you? Why should you care what
happens to any man?”
“But I hated him,” she protested. “He had given me cause to hate him.”
“You had a strange way of showing it. You made yourself most amazingly
charming. He could never have guessed--no one could ever have guessed
who watched you with him, that you--”
“Ah, no. Only you and I--we knew. It wasn't our business to let
everybody guess.”
Suddenly she seemed to divine what was troubling him. Darting out her
hand, she seized his wrist in a grip of steel. That such strength lay
hidden in so frail a hand was unexpected. Her attitude instantly changed
to one of coaxing.
“You're jealous. Don't be jealous. It had to be, and it's ended. In a
sense it was for your sake that it had to happen.”
Leisurely he freed himself, bending back her fingers and taking pleasure
in demonstrating that his strength was the greater.
“I've no idea what you're talking about,” he said coldly. “Your feelings
toward Prince Rogovich are none of my concern. If, by the thing that had
to happen, you refer to the shameless way in which you made love to him,
I can not conceive any possible set of circumstances that would make it
necessary for you to make love for my sake to another man.”
He had turned and was sauntering away from her. She went after him
breathlessly, arresting him once more with the secret strength of her
slim, gloved hand.
“To make love to him! I didn't mean that.”
What it was that she had meant, she had no time to tell. The siren of
the _Ryndam_ burst into an earsplitting blast, impatient, repeated, and
agonizing. At the signal gangplanks were withdrawn from the tug and run
back into dark holes in the side of the liner. Ropes were cast off and
coiled. Engines began to quicken and screws to churn. The narrow channel
which had separated the two vessels commenced to widen. On the _Ryndam_
the band struck up. Above its lively clamor the sound of Prince
Rogovich's name being shouted could still be heard. As Hindwood stared
up at the floating mammoth, scanning the tiers of faces gaping down,
even at tills last moment he half expected to see the Prince come
rushing out. Instead a sight much stranger met his eyes.
The tug was backing away to get sufficient clearance to turn in the
direction of land. She had not quite cleared herself, when signs
of frenzied disturbance were noticeable on the promenade deck. The
musicians were dropping their instruments and fleeing. Passengers were
glancing across their shoulders and scattering in all directions. In the
vacant space which their stampede had created, the infuriated head of
the Prince's wolfhound reared itself. For a couple of seconds he hung
there poised, glaring down; then suddenly he seemed to descry the object
he was searching. Steadying himself, he shot straight out into the gulf
of blackness. In a white streak, like the finger of conscience pointing,
he fell, just missing the deck of the tug, where Hindwood and his
companion were standing. He must have struck the side, for as he reached
the water he sank.
It was over in less time than it takes to tell, but it had seemed to
Hindwood that as the hound had leaped, his burning gaze had been fixed
on Santa Gorlof.