The next day Verdayne and his young companion were introduced to Mr.
Ledoux and his guest.
Gilbert Ledoux, a reserved man evidently descended from generations of
thinking people, was apparently worried, for his face bore unmistakable
signs of some mental disturbance. Paul Zalenska was struck by the
haunted expression of what must naturally have been a grave countenance.
It was not guilt, for he had not the face of a man pursued by
conscience, but it certainly was fear--a real fear. And Paul wondered.
As for the Count de Roannes, the Boy dismissed him at once as unworthy
of further consideration. He was brilliantly, even artificially
polished--glaringly ultra-fashionable, ostentatiously polite and suave.
In the lines of his bestial face he bore the records of a lifetime's
profligacy and the black tales of habitual self-indulgence. Paul hated
him instinctively and wondered how a man of Ledoux's unmistakable
refinement could tolerate him for a moment.
It was not until the middle of the following afternoon that Opal Ledoux
appeared on deck, when her father, with an air of pride, mingled with a
certain curious element of timidity, presented to her in due form both
the Englishman and his friend.
The eyes of the two young people flashed a recognition that the lips of
each tacitly denied as they responded conventionally to the
introduction.
Paul noticed that the shadow of her father's uneasiness was reflected
upon her in a somewhat lesser but all too evident degree. And again he
wondered.
A few moments of desultory conversation that was of no interest to
Paul--and then the Count proposed a game of _écarté_, to which Verdayne
and Ledoux assented readily enough.
But not so our Boy!
_Ecarté!_ Bah! When did a boy of twenty ever want to play cards within
sound of the rustle of a petticoat?--and _such_ a petticoat!
When the elderly gallant noted the attitude of the young fellow he cast
a quick glance of suspicion at Opal. He would have withdrawn his
proposal had he been able to find any plausible excuse. But it was too
late. And with an inward invective on his own blundering, he followed
the other gentlemen to the smoking-room.
And Paul and Opal were at last face to face--and alone!
He turned as the sound of the retreating steps died away and looked long
and searchingly into her face. If the girl intended to ignore their
former meeting, he thought, he would at once put that idea beyond all
question. She bore his scrutiny with no apparent embarrassment. She was
an American girl, and as she would have expressed it, she was "game!"
"Well?" she said at last, questioningly.
"Yes," he responded, "well--well, indeed, _at last_!"
She bowed mockingly.
"And," he went on, "I have been searching for you a long time, Opal!"
He had not intended to say that, but having said it, he would not take
it back.
Then she remembered that she had said that she would call him "Paul" the
first time she met him, and she smiled.
"Searching for me? I don't understand."
"Of course not! Neither do I! Why should we? The best things in life are
the things we don't--and can't--understand. Is it not so?"
"Perhaps!" doubtfully. She had never thought of it in just that light
before, but it might be true. It was human nature to be attracted by
mystery. "But you have been looking for me, you say! Since when?--our
race?" And her laugh rang out on the air with its old mocking rhythm.
And the Boy felt his blood tingle again at the memory of it.
"But what did you say, Monsieur Zalenska--pardon me--Paul, I mean," and
she laughed again, "what did you say as you rode home again?"
The Boy shook his head with affected contrition.
"Unfit to tell a lady!" he said.
And the girl laughed again, pleased by his frankness.
"Vowed eternal vengeance upon my luckless head, I suppose!"
"Oh, not so bad as that, I think," said Paul, pretending to reflect upon
the matter--"I am sure it was not quite so bad as that!"
"It would hardly have done, would it, to vow what you were not at all
sure you would ever be able to fulfil? Take my advice, and never bank a
_sou_ upon the move of any woman!"
"You're not a woman," he laughed in her eyes; "you're just an
abbreviation!"
But Opal was not one whit sensitive upon the subject of her height. Not
she!
"Well, some abbreviations are more effective than the words they stand
for," she retorted. "I shall cling to the flattering hope that such may
be my attraction to the reader whose 'only books are woman's looks!'"
"But why did you run away?"
"Just--because!" Then, after a pause, "Why did you follow?"
"I don't know, do you? Just--because, I suppose!"
And then they both laughed again.
"But I know why you ran. You were afraid!" said Paul.
Her eyes flashed and there was a fine scorn in her tones.
"Afraid--of what, pray?"
"Of being caught--too easily! Come, now--weren't you?"
"I wouldn't contradict you for the world, Paul."
She lingered over his name with a cadence in her tone that made it
almost a caress. It thrilled him again as it had from the beginning.
"But I'll forgive you for running away from me, since I am so fortunate
as to be with you now where you can't possibly run very far! Strange,
isn't it, how Fate has thrown us together?"
"Very!"
There was a dry sarcasm in the tones, and a mockery in the glance, that
told him she was not blind to his manoeuvres. Their eyes met and they
laughed again. Truly, life just then was exceedingly pleasant for the
two on the deck of the Lusitania.
"But I was looking for you before that, Opal--long before that--weeks!"
The girl was truly surprised now and turned to him wonderingly. Then,
without question, he told her of his overhearing her at the garden
party--what a long time ago it seemed!--and his desire, ever since, to
meet her.
He told her, too, of his hearing her laugh at the theatre that night;
but the girl was silent, and said not a word of having seen him there.
Confidences were all right for a man, she thought, but a girl did well
to keep some things to herself.
He did not say that he was deliberately following her to America, but
the girl had her own ideas upon the subject and smiled to herself at the
lively development of affairs since that tiresome garden party she had
found so unbearable. Here was an adventure after her own heart.
And yet Opal Ledoux had much on her mind just then. The Boy had read the
signs upon her face correctly. She was troubled.
For a long time they sat together, and looking far out over the vast
expanse of dancing blueness, they spoke of life--and the living of it.
And both knew so little of either!
It was a strange talk for the first one--so subtly intimate, with its
flashes of personality and freedom from conventions, that it seemed like
a meeting of old friends, rather than of strangers. Some intimacies are
like the oak, long and steady of growth; others spring to full maturity
in an hour's time. And these two had bridged the space of years in a few
moments of converse. They understood each other so well.
This same idea occurred to them simultaneously, as she looked up at him
with eyes glowing with a quick appreciation of some well-expressed and
worthy thought. Something within him stirred to sudden life--something
that no one else had ever reached.
He looked into her eyes and thought he had never looked into the eyes of
a woman before. She smiled--and he was sure it was the first time he had
ever seen a woman smile!
"I am wild to be at home again," she was saying, "fairly crazy for
America! How I love her big, broad, majestic acres--the splendid sweep
of her meadows--the massive grandeur of her mountain peaks--the glory of
her open skies! You too, I believe, are a wanderer on strange seas. You
can hardly fail to understand my longing for the homeland!"
"I do understand, Opal. I am on my first visit to your country. Tell me
of her--her institutions, her people! Believe me, I am greatly
interested!"
And he was--in _her_! Nothing else counted at that moment. But the girl
did not understand that--then!
For half an hour, perhaps, she lost herself in an eloquent eulogy of
America, while the Boy sat and watched her, catching the import of but
little that she said, it must be confessed, but drinking in every detail
of her expressive countenance, her flashing, lustrous eyes, her red,
impulsive lips and rounded form, and her white, slender hands, always
employed in the expression of a thought or as the outlet for some
passing emotion. He caught himself watching for the occasional glimpses
of her small white teeth between the rose of her lips. He saw in her
eyes the violet sparks of smouldering fires, kindled by the volcanic
heart sometimes throbbing and threatening so close to the surface. When
the eruption came!--Fascinated he watched the rise and sweep of her
white arm. Every line and curve of her body was full of suggestion of
the ardent and restless and impulsive temperament with which nature had
so lavishly endowed her. She was alive with feeling--alive to the
finger-tips with the joy of life, the fullness of a deep, emotional
nature.
It occurred to Paul that nature had purposely left her body so small,
albeit so beautifully rounded, that it might devote all its powers to
the building therein of a magnificent, flaming soul--that her inner
nature might always triumph. But Opal had never been especially
conscious of a soul--scarcely of a body. She had not yet found herself.
Paul's emotions were in such chaotic rebellion that the thunder of his
heart-beats mingled with the pulse hammering through his brain and made
him for the first time in his life curiously deaf to his own thoughts.
As she met his eye, expressing more than he realized of the storm
within, her own fell with a sudden sense of apprehension. She rose and
looked far out over the restless waves with a sudden flush on her
dimpled cheek, a subtle excitement in her rapid words.
"As for our men, Paul, they are only human beings, but mighty with that
strength of physique and perfect development of mind that makes for
power. They are men of dauntless purpose. They are men of pure thoughts
and lofty ideals. They know what they want and bend every ambition and
energy to its attainment. Of course I speak of the average American--the
_type_! The normal American is a born fighter. Yes, that is the key-note
of American supremacy! We never give up! never! In my country, what men
want, they get!"
She raised her hand in a quaint, expressive gesture, and the loose
sleeve fell back, leaving her white arm bare. He sprang to his feet, his
eyes glowing.
"And in my country, what men want, they _take_!" he responded
fiercely--almost brutally and without a second's warning Paul threw his
arms about her and crushed her against his breast. He pressed his lips
mercilessly upon her own, holding them in a kiss that seemed to Opal
would never end.
"How--how dare you!" she gasped, when at last she escaped his grasp and
faced him in the fury of outraged girlhood. "I--I--hate you!"
"Dare? When one loves one dares anything!" was his husky response. "I
shall have had my kiss and you can never forget that! Never! never!"
And Paul's voice grew exultant.
Opal had heard of the brutality, the barbarism of passion, but her life
had flowed along conventional channels as peacefully as a quiet river.
She had longed to believe in the fury of love--in that irresistible
attraction between men and women. It appealed to her as it naturally
appeals to all women who are alive with the intensity of life. But she
had _seen_ nothing of it.
Now she looked living Passion in the face for the first time, and was
appalled--half frightened, half fascinated--by the revelation. That kiss
seemed to scorch her lips with a fire she had never dreamed of. With
the universal instinct of shamed womanhood, she pressed her handkerchief
to her lips, rubbing fiercely at the soiled spot. He divined her thought
and laughed, with a note of exultation that stirred her Southern blood.
In defiance she raised her eyes and searched his face, seeking some
solution of the mystery of her own heart's strange, rebellious
throbbing. What could it mean?
Paul took another step toward her, his face softening to tenderness.
"What is it, Opal?" he breathed.
"I was--trying--to understand you."
"I don't understand myself sometimes--certainly not to-day!"
"I thought you were a gentleman!"
(I wonder if Eve didn't say that to Adam in the garden!)
"I have been accustomed to entertain that same idea myself," he said,
"but, after all, what is it to be a gentleman? All men can be gentle
when they get what they want. That's no test of gentility. It takes
circumstances outside the normal to prove man's civilization. When his
desires meet with opposition the brute comes to the surface--that's
all."
Another rush of passion lighted his eyes and sought its reflection in
hers. Opal turned and fled.
* * * * *
In the seclusion of her stateroom Opal faced herself resolutely. A
sensation of outrage mingled with a strange sense of guilt. Her
resentment seemed to blend with something resembling a strange, fierce
joy. She tried to fight it down, but it would not be conquered.
Why was he so handsome, so brilliant, this strange foreign fellow whom
she felt intuitively to be more than he claimed to be? What was the
secret of his power that even in the face of this open insult she could
not be as angry as she knew she should have been?
She looked in the mirror apprehensively. No, there was no sign of that
terrible kiss. And yet she felt as though all the world must have seen
had they looked at her--felt that she was branded forever by the burning
touch of his lips!