They took their supper in a near-by oyster house, invaded by a
chattering throng, drummed over by an indefatigable orchestra. She had
looked forward keenly to the tete-a-tete. She was terribly
disillusioned. It was not at all exciting. Conversation was impossible,
and what they said was meaningless. She became irritable and restless,
for she had a feeling that she was being defrauded--that this man was
not like the rest, that he was one worth knowing, drawing out, an
adversary who would compel her to utilize all the light volatile
artillery of her audacious imagination.
"Listen," she broke out suddenly, "this is a horrible failure. I really
want to talk to you! Have you seen enough of the rehearsal?"
"Plenty!"
"Let's cut it, then!"
"Madame Quichy would never forgive me!"
She was silent a moment, rebuffed.
"I'm out of sorts. You can at least take me home!"
"Certainly!"
Arrived at the house, she said reluctantly:
"Well, come in for just a moment!"
And the parlor being occupied, they went to her room.
"Is Your Honor really going to spare me ten minutes from the fascinating
Sada Quichy?" she said, pouting, once arrived.
"Ten hours, if you like!" he said, taking off his coat with a gesture of
finality.
She was so delighted at this unhoped-for treason that she clapped her
hands like a child, not perceiving how he had made her ask each time for
what he really wanted.
"You're really going to stay?"
"Yes, indeed!"
"How exciting!"
She let her coat slip into his hands, and going to the mirror, raised
her hat slowly from her rebellious golden curls with one of those
indescribable, intimate, feminine gestures that have such allurement to
the gaze of men. If, with Blainey, she had resorted to abrupt and
dashing ways, with Massingale she felt herself wholly feminine, sure
that each turn of her head, line of her body, or caressing movement of
her arms would find appreciation.
She looked at him a moment over her shoulder, arching her eyebrows with
eyes that seemed brimming with caprice.
"You know, I was quite determined you should come!" she said, laughing,
and with a sudden swift passage of the room, she darted on the sofa,
curling her legs under her, hugging her knees, and resting her little
chin on them in elfish amusement. "Honor bright! Made up my mind there
in the theater!"
"So did I!" he said frankly.
"Really? And Sada Quichy?"
"She is a known quantity! It's much more amusing gambling with
possibilities!"
Since taking her coat he had remained standing, examining the room with
a keen instinct for significant details.
"Two beds?"
"This is Snyder's," she said, patting it. "She's rehearsing. Won't be
home till late."
Without asking her permission, he moved about curiously, smiling at the
trunks which stood open, and the bureaus with their gaping drawers.
"Heavens! everything is in an awful mess!" she said, with a little
ejaculation.
"Don't change it. I like it! It looks real!" he said, continuing.
She allowed him to pry into corners, watching him from the soft depths
of the couch, a little languid from the varied emotions of the day,
longing to be rid of the stiff pumps and the fatigue of her day dress.
The different dramatizations she had indulged in with Peavey, Sassoon
and Blainey had aroused her craving for sudden transpositions. If only
this should not prove disappointing! She felt an exhilarated curiosity,
more stirred than ever before. Did he really know her, divine her, as
she believed? How would he act? Was he only mentally curious, or was
that a clever mask for a more personal interest? She had a feeling that
she had known him for years, that all they could say had been said again
and again.
He was young at forty-five, and yet already gray. She liked that. Youth
and gray hair, she thought, were distinguished in a judge. There was an
air of authority about him that imposed on her. He did not ask
permission for what he did, and yet it carried no offense. He was
dressed perfectly, and that counted for much with her--so perfectly that
she did not even notice what he wore, except that the tones were soft
and gave her a sensation of pleasure, and that the cut was
irreproachable.
All the accent lay about the eyes and the fine moldings of the forehead.
The eyes were deep, hidden under the brows, Bismarckian in their set,
and not so calm, after all, she thought. She found herself studying the
lines of his mouth, strong and yet susceptible. And as she studied the
characteristic mockery of his smile, that smile which gave him the
appearance of one who projects above the crowd and sees beyond the
serried heads, it did not seem so much the man himself as an attitude
carefully assumed against the world. Was there a drama back of it all?
At any rate, her curiosity awaking her zest, she began to wonder what he
would be like in anger--that is, if anything could move him to anger, or
to anything else! This last provocative thought aroused the
danger-defying little devil within her. The languor vanished; she felt
swiftly, aggressively alert.
"And this is where we say our prayers," he said, pointing to the white
bed.
"Every night!" she answered promptly.
"Really?" he said, raising his eyebrows.
"Every night," she repeated, "I throw myself on my knees and cry, all in
a breath:
"'O Lord! give me everything I want!' Then I dive into bed, and pull the
covers over my head!"
"H'm!" he said, his chin in his hand, looking down at her as she rocked
in laughter on the couch. "After all, that's what a prayer is, isn't
it?"
"I think so. Oh!"
Suddenly on the floor, tipping from the edge of the couch, her pumps
fell with a crash. She had slipped them off surreptitiously, concealing
the operation with her skirts. She sprang on the rug in her green
stocking feet, snatching up the indiscreet pumps, and retreating to the
closet, but without confusion.
"What are you doing now?" she said, bobbing out suddenly.
He was standing by the chrysanthemums, reaching up.
"I was wondering if they were real."
"Imitation?"
"You don't know that trick," he said maliciously. "A great invention of
one girl I knew. You ought to know it! She had three vases,
chrysanthemums, roses, violets, all imitation. She said they were the
only flowers she cared for; so, when orders came in, all the florist did
was to telephone the amount he would credit to her account!"
"Was the florist Pouffe?" asked Dore, stopping short and laughing.
"One of them. But the real touch was when the admirer called. She would
place the vase of roses, say, on the mantel,--out of reach,
naturally,--blow a special perfume in the room, and say:
"'My! how wonderfully fragrant those roses are!'"
Dore felt divined; she laughed, conscious of a telltale color.
"Really, Your Honor, you know entirely too much!"
"I adore the little wretches--and their games!" he said frankly. "I'm
always on their side!"
"You don't adore anything! You couldn't!"
She had stopped before him, looking up at him with her blue eyes, which
were no longer cloudy but sparkling with provocation.
"You read character, too," he answered, smiling impersonally. "It's
true--it's safer and more amusing! Let me behind the scenes. I like
it--that's all I ask!"
"All?"
"Quite all!" he said dryly. Then: "What are you going to do with Sassoon
and Harrigan Blood?"
He asked the question without preparation, to throw her off her guard,
but she avoided it by asking another.
"Are you really just looking on?" she said, drawing her eyebrows
together. "Only curious?"
"It's as I told you," he said. "You see how I am here. Can't you tell?"
She shook her head.
"I can't tell; I can't tell anything about you!"
"You were not very nice to me at the luncheon!" he said irrelevantly.
"I know it!"
"You would hardly speak to me!"
"No."
"Why?"
"Shall I tell you? Because--because you are too strong for me!" she said
solemnly, her eyes growing curiously round and large.
He laughed.
"Now, Miss Mischief, that's too evident!"
"It's true! I felt it from the start," she said simply. "Sit down."
He credited her with being deeper than he had believed, whereas she had
only obeyed an impulse.
"Is Blainey a possibility too?" he asked suddenly.
"What! he has guessed even Blainey?" she thought, startled; but, as she
began an evasive answer, satisfied, he turned to a trunk, closed it and
installed himself, folding his arms.
"I'll tell you what I am going to do with Sassoon and Blood," she said
suddenly. She had camped on another trunk, swinging one little foot
incased within a red slipper, ten feet of the faded rug between them. "I
am going to make--oh, a lot of trouble!"
"You've started it already!"
"Tell me--was there really a terrible row?" she asked, clapping her
hands eagerly. "All over little me?"
"H'm, yes--rather! We had some difficulty in stopping it!" He looked at
her, amused, with the gaze of one who appreciates the irony of values.
"Do you know, you pretty little atom, that you are setting in motion
forces that may shake millions?"
"Oh, how lovely! Tell me!"
"Perhaps I'd better not!" he said grimly. "And suppose I told you that
if you made Sassoon and Blood enemies over your charming little person,
that Blood is capable of turning all the force of his newspapers against
the Sassoon interests, making ugly revelations and bringing on a mild
panic, would you persist?"
"Certainly I should!" she exclaimed enthusiastically.
"So is history made!" he thought to himself. "Now, answer me honestly."
"Well?"
"Don't you ever feel any temptation--"
"With Sassoon--money?"
He put out his arm in a gesture that swept the room.
"You are satisfied with this?"
"Do you know, that's just what he asked--the very words!"
"Yes; Sassoon would be pretty sure to ask that. And you are never
tempted?"
"I thought you knew us!" she said proudly. "You don't--no, you don't
understand at all!--or you wouldn't have asked that question!" But, not
yet ready to talk, wishing to put a score of questions to him, she
changed abruptly: "So, Your Honor, you are just curious about me?"
"I am--very curious!" he said, looking at her with a touch of his
magisterial manner. "It's a queer game you are playing!"
"It's such fun!"
"Yes," he said, unbending; "it is fun; but what's going to come of it?"
She flung out her arms.
"_Quien sabe!_"
"I wonder what is the answer," he said, with a touch of solemnity.
"There are so many possible answers!"
"Oh, now, Your Honor," she said, with a pouting look, a little restless,
too, under his fixed gaze, "are we to be as serious as all that?"
"You girls are marvelous," he said in a lighter tone, "and you don't
even appreciate the wonders you accomplish!"
"Go on! Cross-examine me! It's a new experience!" she said, dropping her
hands into her lap resignedly, with mock submission. She felt as though
she were playing a great role, and that before an audience which would
not respond--which she was determined should respond; and yet, much as
she wished to try his composure, she was still groping for the proper
tactics.
"Some day will you tell me something?"
"I'm afraid, Your Honor, I'd tell you almost anything! What is it?"
"Where you come from--your home--why you left--"
"The story of my life--right away!"
"I should be interested!"
"My father was shot the week before I was born," she began, composing
her features. "Mother was arrested on suspicion; I was born in jail...."
"Wait," he said, with an appreciative nod. "I don't want a romance!"
She laughed with some confusion.
"What a pity! It was such a good start."
"I want the truth--not one of a dozen stories you've made up!"
She eyed the tip of her red slipper, raising it slightly.
"Some day I'll tell you," she said finally. "Next question!"
"Where in the world did you pick up the name?"
"Pick up? What do you mean?"
"The 'Dore.' It wasn't your own!"
"Oh, I found it," she said, turning away hastily, as if afraid he might
have guessed.
That was one thing she could never tell him, no matter where future
confidences might lead her. It had, in truth, been the suggestion of a
certain Josh Nebbins, press-agent for a local theater, who had once
adored her fatuously--one of those forgotten minor incidents, lost in
the impenetrable mists of an outlived beginning, an indiscretion that
she wished to forget, an impossible admirer of the days when her taste
had not been cultivated.
Luckily, in this moment of her confusion the telephone saved her.
"Shall I close my ears?" he said instantly.
"The idea! Do you think I haven't learned how to telephone?" she said
indignantly. "See how much you can gather from it!"
He waited, availing himself of her permission to listen, seeking in vain
to patch sense in the guarded replies that came to him:
"I know who it is. Go ahead.... No, not alone--but that makes no
difference.... Well, I thought it was time! Engaged to-night!... You saw
me?... To-day--this afternoon.... 'Deed I am!... Why not? Lovely!... I'm
sorry!... When?... Yes!... Oh, terribly exciting!..."
He smiled, and admitting defeat, continued his examination of the room.
Keen amateur of the thousandfold subterranean currents of the city, none
interested him more than the adventurous life of the Salamanders, with
their extraordinary contrasts of wealth and poverty. He had known them
by the dozens, and yet each was a new problem. Was it possible that she
could experience no temptation before the opportunities of sudden
wealth, so boldly enticing, or did she not realize what such
opportunities could mean? The interview interested him hugely. He felt
himself master of the situation, enjoying the sudden turns of his
intimate knowledge that kept her on the defensive--keen enough to know
the advantage, with a woman, of establishing an instant superiority.
"Well?" she said, returning and looking at him with a teasing glance.
"I'll admit that you've learned to telephone," he said appreciatively.
"What were you planning--how best to elope?"
"You didn't guess who it was?"
"Sassoon?"
"No; Mr. Harrigan Blood."
"H'm! I should like to have heard--"
The telephone interrupted again, but this time, responding in an assumed
voice, she cut it off abruptly, swinging back to her perch on the trunk.
"Ready! Go on with the examination. Well! what are you thinking?"
"I am trying to see the whole scheme," he said, looking at her
seriously. "Sassoon, Blood,--twenty others, I understand,--excitement
and all that. How long have you been in it?"
"In what?"
"In this maelstrom of New York?"
"Two years, almost!"
"Ah, then there must be a man or two behind the rocks!"
"How funnily you express things," she said, half guessing his meaning.
"Just what do you mean?"
He took out his cigarette-case, asked permission with a nod, and
lighting a match, said:
"The man behind the rock? Oh, that's obvious! The man you have only to
whistle for, the passably acceptable man, safe, eligible, marriageable.
The man who will come forward at any time! Every woman understands that.
Perhaps there are several rocks, way back in the background? No fibbing,
now!"
She laughed, and thinking of Peavey, blushed under his quick gaze.
"Yes, of course."
"More than one?"
"Three or four; but I shall never whistle!"
"That's what makes the game so exhilarating, isn't it?"
"Naturally! There's always a retreat," she said, nodding.
His way of taking her, unexpected and positive, made her forget, at
times, the combat intended, in the delight of self-analyzation.
"Your eyes are extraordinary," he said, meeting her glance critically.
"They're not eyes; they're blue clouds entangled in your eyelashes."
But even in this there was no personal enthusiasm. He spoke
enthusiastically, but as an observer, calculating and foreseeing
developments. This compliment infuriated Dore. She was not accustomed to
having men meet her full glance with nothing but criticism.
"Thank you!" she said icily. "You compliment like an oculist."
"No oculist would understand the value of such eyes," he answered
calmly; "De Joncy was right when he said there was a million in each."
"So you overheard?"
"And you--did you understand?"
"Of course!"
She sprang to the floor, and went to the dressing-table on the pretext
of seeking a comb.
"I don't like the way you talk to me," she said, with her back to him.
"Why?"
The real reason she could not avow--that she resented this immovable
impersonality of his attitude. This man, who saw into her, who divined
so much that she believed securely masked, and yet showed no trace of
emotion even in his flattery, began to irritate her, as well as to
arouse all the dangerous vanities. But, as she could not tell him this,
she assumed an indignant manner and said:
"I believe you really think I shall turn into an adventuress!"
"No-o," he said slowly, as if reflecting. "You may come near it--very
near it; but it will be a hazard of the imagination. You will end very
differently!"
"Ah, yes," she said, suddenly remembering, her irritation yielding to
her curiosity, "you were going to prophesy. Well, what's going to happen
to me?"
"You will be angry if I tell you," he said, with a whimsical pursing of
his lips.
"No! What?"
"You will burn up another year or so; you will come very, very near a
good many things; and then you will marry, and turn into a devoted,
loyal little _Hausfrau_--like a million other little _Hausfraus_ who
have thought they were in this world to do anything else but marry!"
"No, no! Don't you dare say that!" she said, covering her ears and
stamping her foot. "That never!"
"Mark my prophecy," he said, with mock solemnity, delighted at the fury
he had aroused.
"No, no! I won't be commonplace!" she cried. "I am in this world to do
something unusual, extraordinary. I'm not like every other little woman.
Marriage? Never! Three meals a day at the same hours--the same
man--domesticity! Horrors!"
"Of course, of course," he said, with his provoking analytic exactness
of phrase. "My dear girl, this is not a real life you are indulging in!
Some day, perhaps, I'll discuss it more frankly with you. All this is a
phase of mild hysteria. Do you know what you are doing? You're not
living; you're rejecting life--yes, just that!--with every man you meet.
The time comes when you will have to select. The forces of nature you
are playing with are bigger than you; they'll conquer you in the
end--decide for you! Now you play at fooling men so much that you fool
yourself. When you marry, you will surprise yourself!"
"Stop!" she cried furiously. "Marriage! Yes, that's all you men believe
we are capable of! But we are different now. We can be free--we can live
our own lives! And I will _not_ be commonplace. Nothing can make me
that. I'd rather have a tragic love-affair than that! Oh, what's the use
of living, if you have to do as every one else does!"
She went to the window at the side, covering the ground with the leap
of a panther, working herself to a fury.
"Do you know what this wall is?" she cried, striking the curtain, which
rolled up with the report of a pistol--"this ugly, hateful, brutal wall
that I hate, loathe, despise? That's matrimony!--ugly, cold, horrid
wall!"
She groped with her hand, caught the tassel, and pulled the shade
without turning around.
"But, you see, you can't shut it out!" he said maliciously, pointing to
the space that showed under the deficient shade.
"There'll be no wall in my life," she said, with a toss of her head. She
felt herself in her most effective theatrical mood, and she flung the
reins to it, caring nothing where it led her. Now, at all costs, she was
resolved to thaw out this glacial reserve of his, rouse him, teach him
that she could not be held so cheap. "No wall in my life! No man to tell
me: Do this--do that--come here--go there! Sacrifices? I shall never
make them! I tell you, all I want is to live--to really live! A short
life, but a free one! You think Sassoon tempts me; you think I'd change
this room for a palace or a home! You don't understand me! No; not with
all you think you understand!"
"Tell me!" he said, transforming himself into an audience.
She changed suddenly from the passion of protest to almost a caressing
delight, ready to turn into a hundred shapes to overwhelm him. For this
perfect discipline of his rushed her on. She would find under the
observer the spark of the savage! Perhaps it was because she had no fear
that she played so boldly, recognizing in him the true gentleman, and
womanlike, presuming on this knowledge. He continued like a statue. She
was not quiet a moment, flitting to and fro near him, dangerously near
him, with a hundred coquetries of movement, half-revealing poses, sudden
flashes of the eyes, confiding smiles, all tantalizing, insinuating,
caressing, tender, provoking, filled with the zest of a naughty child.
"Oh, Your Honor! you're a very, very wise man," she said, shaking her
finger at him, "but you have not seized the real point. We want to be
free! Yes, we could live where we wanted,--in the finest
apartments,--but it is such fun to be in an old boarding-house at ten
dollars a week, when you never know how you're going to raise the rent!
Ah, the rent! that's a terrible bugbear, I can tell you! You know one
trick for doing it. There are a hundred, things you would never guess;
for, with all your prying eyes, you are just like the rest--less stupid,
not more clever!"
"Tell me some," he said, his eyes half closed as if dazzled by this
sudden outpouring of youth and excitement.
"No--no," she said, shaking her hair so merrily that a loosened curl
came tumbling over her ear. She changed the mood, coming near to him,
laying her hand appealingly on his sleeve. "Ah, don't get wrong ideas.
Don't judge us too harshly! We're not mercenary at the bottom; it isn't
the money we want--that's very little! It's the fun of playing the
game!"
"Precipices?" he suggested, nodding.
"Ah, yes, precipices!" she said, in a sudden ecstasy; and as she said it
her eyes drooped, her lips seemed to tremble apart as if giving up her
body to a sigh half ecstasy, half languor.
"I can remember when I adored precipices, too," he said, drawing his arm
away from her touch and folding it over the other, tightly across his
chest.
"Remember!" she said mockingly, snapping her fingers under his nose.
"You do now. Who doesn't?" She put a space between them with a sudden
bound, as though he had made a move to retain her. Then, with a whirl,
she poised herself gleefully on the arm of a chair. "I adore precipices!
It's such fun to go dashing along their edges, leaning up against the
wind that tries to throw you over, looking way, way down, thousands of
miles, and hear the little stones go tumbling down, down--and then to
crouch suddenly, spring aside and see a great, stupid, puffy man snatch
at the air and go head over heels, kerplunk! You don't understand that
feeling?" she said, stopping short.
"I understand that!" he said curtly.
She whirled suddenly on her feet, extending her arms against an
imaginary gale, and bending over, her finger on her lips, pretended to
gaze into unfathomable depths.
"But you never fall in," he said wisely.
Instantly she straightened up.
"Oh, dear, no! for then, you see, there would be only _one_ precipice,
endlessly, forever and ever! No more precipices, no more fun, no more
Dodo--and that would be unbearable!"
"And are there many precipices, Dodo?" he said, assuming the privilege.
"Oh, dear, yes--many precipices," she said, watching him maliciously.
"There are old precipices, but those aren't interesting! Then, there are
new ones, too; oh, yes, several very interesting new ones!"
"Blainey," he said; but she shook her head.
"I'm afraid that's not a precipice," she said seriously. But at once,
back in her roguish mood, she continued: "Sassoon's a moderately
exciting precipice, only he will look so ridiculous as he goes spinning
down, all arms and legs!"
She took a few steps toward the door, and put her hand to her ear.
"And I think there was the beginning of another precipice there
to-night; only--oh!" She exaggerated the exclamation with a confidential
nod to him. "That is a very risky one. I shall have to be very careful,
and always have a long start!"
"Others?"
"Others? Of course there are others!" she said indignantly.
"Everywhere--naturally--but I'm not going to tell you. You know entirely
too much already. Only of one!"
"Aha!"
"A very curious one, but very exciting! A precipice that I can see right
here in this room!"
"An old one?"
"Not at all! Quite new!" She made a pretense of simulating it on the
rug, to pass mockingly under his eyes, daintily, with steps that trod on
air. "Do you want to know where it is?"
"Where?"
"It runs from the tip of this mischievous, naughty red slipper, right
straight across the carpet, to--let me see! where does it go?
Over--over--over here!"
She came with her head down, peeping up from under her eyelashes,
balancing with her hands on an imaginary line, straight by him, laughing
to herself, and passed so close that he felt the flutter of her dress
and the warm perfume from her hair.
"Little devil!" he said between his teeth, and flinging out his hand,
caught her retreating shoulder.
She wrenched herself free, sprang away and turned, blazing with anger,
forgetting all that she had done wilfully, maliciously, to tantalize
him--illogical, unreasoning, wildly revolting at the acquiring touch of
this male hand on her free body.
"How dare you!" she cried, advancing on him, gloriously enraged, fists
clenched. "How dare you! You--you contemptible--you--oh, you brute,
brute! You dare to touch me again--you dare!" She turned suddenly,
striking him on the chest with her little fists, crude, futile, repeated
blows, choking with shame, still in the dramatized mood. "You dared--you
dared! And I trusted--oh!"
He did not retreat, opposing no resistance to the frantic drumming of
her blows, watching her coldly, with something besides ice in the
intensity of his mocking glance. Then, when from lack of breath her rage
spent itself a moment, he said calmly, his glance in her glance, as a
trainer's subduing a revolted animal, deliberate, slow, imperative:
"Now, stop acting!"
She caught herself up, tried to answer and found only another furious
gesture.
"I said, stop acting!" he repeated bruskly, and stepping to her, caught
her in his arms. She cried out in a muffled strangled voice, turning,
twisting, flinging herself about fruitlessly in the iron of his embrace.
He held her silently until she ceased to struggle; and then his eyes
continued to hold her eyes, fixed, imperious, compelling her gaze. She
remained quiet--very quiet, looking at him startled, in doubt, seeing in
him something new, masterful. And as he continued steadily looking into
her eyes, penetrating beyond, overcoming all resistance, a smile came to
her, a smile of confession, gathering from the cloudy blue of her eyes,
running down the curve of her cheek, playing about the thin upturned
lips. He bent his head deliberately. She did not turn aside her lips....
Then on this embrace came another, a convulsive frantic clinging of the
lips, a kiss which conquered them both, flinging a mist across their
eyes, stopping their ears, stilling their reason. This kiss, which went
through her like a flame, blinding out the world, hurling into her brain
a new life and a new knowledge, caught him, too, in the moment when he
felt the strongest, the most able to dare. Neither his eyes nor his
brain had foreseen this--nor the touch of her arms twining about his
neck. He had a moment of vertigo in which he suddenly ceased to think.
He kissed her again, and she answered hungrily, whispering:
"I didn't know! Ah, you've come--"
All at once his mind cleared as if a hand of ice had touched his
forehead. He tried to put her arms from him, aroused, suddenly
frightened at where he had been whirled by the immense combustibility of
nature. But still she clung to him, her eyes closed, her lips raised,
repeating:
"At last--oh, at last!"
"What have I done?" he said to himself, conscious-stricken at her
glorified face. He stiffened against the soft arms, that sought to draw
him back, saying hoarsely:
"Dodo--listen, Dodo!"
But she shook her head, pervaded suddenly by an incomprehensible ecstasy
of weakness, the oblivion of absolute surrender. She opened her eyes
once, and let them close again heavily.
"Please," she said in a whisper, "don't--don't say anything. Don't
talk.... It's all too wonderful!"
Then, abruptly, he tore her away from him, grasping his coat, placing a
table between them.
"To-morrow!" he said, in a voice he did not recognize, knowing not what
to believe, afraid of what he might say, amazed that all his will had
gone.
She gave a cry, extending her hands to him.
"No! Oh, don't go!"
"I must, Dodo! I must!"
"How can you?" she cried. "How cruel!"
She covered her face suddenly, and her whole body began to tremble.
"Good night!" he said hurriedly, a prey to a wild tugging that bade him
leap to her.
She did not answer, swaying in the center of her room, shaken from head
to foot.
"Good night!" He took a long breath and repeated: "Good night, Dodo!"
Still she did not answer.
"To-morrow!"
No longer trusting himself, he flung through the door, out and down the
stairs.
She went herself across the room, her knees sinking under her, groped
for the door, weakly closed it and turned the key. And for the first
time she was afraid!
How was it possible that she, who had known so much, who had feared so
little, should suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, have been
overwhelmed, caught and mastered? What did it mean? And this question
brought with it a fierce delirious joy in her moment of panic. For she
was in fear--of many things known, and things uncomprehended: fear of
where she had passed; fear of where she was going; of him!
Had it been only a game, or had he, too, been caught as she had been
caught? Fear there was of the flames that lay in his touch, fear of
that blank moment when she had known nothing, cared nothing, with the
sudden starting horror with which once she had come out of a swoon. But
most of all she had a fear of the fire that had broken out within her,
in that first awful, lawless moment, in which the knowledge of life had
come to her in blinding realization.
"Do I--is it love? If not, what is it? Why am I so?"
But this time she did not dramatize her mood. She found no answer,
slowly recovering mastery of herself. She remained with her back against
the door, her arms extended, barring the return, bewildered, weak,
revolted, happy, fearing, listening.
Suddenly the sound of a returning step--a tapping on the door,
irresolute, and a voice calling to her.
It was Massingale.
So! He had not been able to go! In a flash she was again the free
Salamander, emerging out of the fire of conflict, triumphant by the last
dramatic hazard. And being her own mistress again, she made no mistake.
She drew herself up, arms barring the door in the sign of a cross.
"Not now!" she said breathlessly.
He did not answer. She heard his step on the stairs, descending. When,
at last, her arms fell, there was a gleam of exultation in her eyes.
Whatever this might mean, wherever it might lead, she knew now, by that
momentary yielding weakness of his return, that she would be--in the
last crisis--the stronger!