He, too, looked earnestly at the clock. A self-conscious laugh followed
his words.
Belinda remarked that as her dinner was at eight _she_ wasn't so very
early. "I ought to be going now...." she concluded.
Sophy finished fastening her gloves and came forward. One of the side
lights caught her full as she did so, and her white figure sprang out
against the shadows of the room beyond with the glitter of snow-spray in
sunlight.
She saw Loring glance at her, then look away. Belinda, her chin a little
down, gazed steadily. Sophy came still nearer. She had been so pale and
listless of late that the delicate, soft fire of her cheeks, and the
dark, bright fire of her eyes was doubly striking. The little tongues of
flame that lit her hair dazzled with iridescence. Her gown, the jewels
in her hair, the light in her dark eyes--all were quivering, glinting.
But she herself was very still. This intense, composed stillness of hers
seemed to make the others restless. They fidgeted--Belinda with the blue
flowers, Loring with another cigarette.
Suddenly Belinda said spasmodically:
"You _are_ gorgeous to-night, ain't you?"
"You like my gown?" asked Sophy, smiling.
"Ripping," said Belinda.
"I rather like it myself," said Sophy. "I hope you like it, too,
Morris?"
"Awfully smart ... you look awfully well...." he murmured.
Belinda left off fingering the flowers.
"I really ought to be going," she said.
"Yes. It's about time for you to go now," assented Sophy.
Her tone was quite even, yet at something in it those two winced.
Sophy had a cruel moment.
"Do you know," she said, "you and Morris both seem rather overstrung to
me. What's the matter? You haven't been quarrelling again already, have
you?"
Neither answered. Sophy repeated it. "Have you?" she said again.
"No," said Loring.
Belinda had taken up her wrap from a chair and was going towards the
door.
"I think the carriage _must_ be there...." she said in a high,
artificially anxious voice as she went. She almost ran into the arms of
Simms, who had come to announce the brougham.
Sophy stood smiling and looking after her. Then, still smiling, she
turned to Loring. It was a peculiar smile.
"Will _you_ tell me what has happened, Morris?" she said, and he thought
her tone also very peculiar.
"'Happened'?... Why, nothing," he stammered.
He was appalled to hear himself stammering. He wondered with panic what
his expression was like. It was in fact so puerile in its look of
nervous guilt that Sophy was wrung with sudden shame for them both--for
the man who looked at her with that weak, apprehensive smirk that sat so
oddly on his pale face--for herself who had stooped to bring it there.
She turned away, saying: "We'd better be going, too, I think."
There was a biting acid of pain at work on her heart now. To have seen
that look on his face--to have brought it there! She, who had once been
"Selene" to him.
Loring stood gazing after her as she walked from him into the hall. Her
beauty struck him as startling. But it struck him as the beauty of the
Snow Queen struck Rudi. It left a sliver of ice in his heart. He was
rather scared by something in her whole look and air. He wondered if
Linda had noticed it. He'd have to talk things out with Linda
to-morrow--take her for a long walk--off on the rocks somewhere. Things
must be got into shape somehow. He had a spasm of sheer terror when he
thought that Sophy might suspect something. Yet he couldn't give up
Belinda. Yet he did not want to give up Sophy. Here again was the
impenetrable wall and the irresistible ball. He had not yet realised
that he alone was not the arbiter of their three destinies. He thought
that it still remained with him to say what the future should or should
not be for himself, for Belinda, for Sophy.
A dance followed the dinner to which they went that night. And Sophy
danced for the first time in several weeks.
As soon as Amaldi saw her, with that tense, bright fever of beauty upon
her, he knew that she was at some crisis. Something of this look she had
had that night in London when he first met her. What was it? What had
brought this strange, "fatal" look to her? Love and apprehension strung
him to the utmost pitch. For he had seen agony under her bright cloak of
exaltation. He feared now that he must have been mistaken. That her love
for Loring still survived.... That this crisis at which she was came
probably from the sudden discovery of how matters stood between her
husband and Belinda Horton.
* * * * *
To Sophy that night was horrible. She did not even try to sleep. She
rushed to and fro among throngs of turbulent thoughts, like a lost child
in a Carnival--like one seeking a friend among frenzied revellers. Now
she would think that she had found it--the thought that would befriend
her. Then the mask would slip, and she would see the evil leer of
revenge, or hatred, or personal malice, or self-centred wrath--not once
the kind face of a thought worthy of her. But towards morning it came to
her of its own will. She lay afterwards with closed eyes, spent and
lifeless. That mental travail had been terrible. Now her good thought
lay weakly on her heart like a babe outworn also by the fierce struggle
of birth. It seemed scarcely to live. She had conceived it and brought
it forth, but it was as though there were no strength in it. She lay
there saying: "God ... help ... help...." as she had said so long ago,
in that other dreadful time at Dynehurst. And as then, little by little,
she became aware as it were of a vast Presence, and from this Presence
there seemed to flow the help for which she had cried.
* * * * *
Belinda and Loring met very early in the lower hall as though by
appointment. Neither had they slept well, but while Loring looked pale
and rather haggard, the girl's face was fresh and beautifully ruddy with
sea-water and defiant passion. She had come up from her morning dip in
the sea, all tingling with love like Anadyomene.
They had fruit and coffee together, then went for that "long walk to the
rocks." When they were safely out of reach of prying eyes, Belinda
turned, expecting a repetition of yesterday's wild embrace.
But Loring sat with his arms about his knees. He looked harassed and
rather glum. He was staring at the sea. Belinda kept her eyes on him.
She had one of her admirable silences. She half knew what was coming,
but she wanted Morry to "begin it."
"Linda," he said at last, still scowling at the milky-blue of the sea,
"I rather think we're up against it--you and I...."
Belinda's eyes narrowed shrewdly.
"What's 'it,' Morry?" she asked.
He gave a jarring little laugh.
"'It' is ... Sophy."
"Mh!" said Belinda.
"Did it strike you last evening," he went on, "that she was ... well ...
er ... that she was a bit on to things?"
"Yes ... it did."
"Well ... er ... have you any notion why she was like that ... all at
once ... so suddenly?"
Belinda dropped a pebble into a little pool in the rocks just below her.
She leaned over looking after it. Then she dropped in another. She was
smiling secretly. Morris turned his head, as she did not answer. This
smile nettled him somehow.
"Well...? Speak up, can't you?" he said sharply.
Belinda dusted her fingers daintily on her handkerchief, then laced them
behind her head. This gesture drew the thin silk of her blouse tight
over her round breasts. The little hollow behind her waist as she leaned
against the dark rock was just large enough for a man's arm. She looked
down sideways at him from under her thick, white lids and the garnet
sparkles came into her eyes.
She passed it to him coolly.
"Yesterday ... when we were in the library together," she said, "I ...
heard a chair move ... in the next room...."
"What?" cried Loring.
He sat erect. His face went scarlet, then white.
"_What?_" he said again.
Belinda nodded.
"Just that ... a chair ... scraped, you know, as if some one had brushed
against it ... in a hurry."
Loring had his lip between his teeth. His eyes looked black as when he
had been drinking heavily.
"You think ... it was ... Sophy?" he said at last.
"Yes," said Belinda.
"Great God!" groaned Loring.
Belinda's face changed. She took down her arms, and bent forward.
"Look here, Morry," said she in a low, concentrated voice. "_You've got
to play square with me._"
Loring gave her a decidedly unloverlike glare.
"Oh, confound you, Linda," he growled, "don't turn heroics on me at this
hour of the morning. I tell you we're in a hell of a mess."
"_I'm_ not," said Belinda.
Loring couldn't help a grin.
"You're not, hey? Well, I like your colossal cheek," he said.
Belinda shot out her hand, and grasped him firmly by the arm with her
white, soft fingers in which the little bones were strong as steel.
"You look at me, Morry," she commanded. "You look me right in the eyes."
He did so, unwillingly.
"Well?" he said.
"I want you to understand," said Belinda, "that when you took me in
your arms yesterday and kissed me ... like that ... _you took me for
good_."
"Oh, go to the devil, Linda! I tell you I'm not in the mood for
high-mucky-muck talk."
"I don't care what mood you're in, and my talk's plain English," said
Belinda. "You played with me two years ago, but you can't play with me
now. I belong to the man who kissed me as you kissed me yesterday, and
_that man belongs to me_."
"Oh, for God's sake, cut it out!" said Morris, with exasperation. "Who
do you think you're talking to?..."
"The man that belongs to me," retorted Belinda fiercely, gritting her
white teeth at him. "The man that belongs to me ... that has always
belonged to me ... ever since that first time he kissed me ... two years
ago--when I was only a child...."
"I don't believe you ever _were_ a child," put in Loring moodily. "I'll
bet you cast some unholy spell in your cradle...."
"Well ... whatever I was or wasn't-- I'm a woman _now_," said Belinda.
"A woman who loves--who's been loved back--who'll die ... who'll _kill_
before she sees that love wrenched from her."
All blazing, she threw herself suddenly upon his breast. Her soft mouth
offered itself--like a flower--fluttered its honeyed, crimson petals
close to his. Tears of rage and love magnified her ardent eyes. The
pulse of her reckless young breast against his was like the pulse of the
sea against the rock. Loring was no rock. He hesitated--was lost--kissed
her greedily. Grew mad with those intemperate kisses intemperately
returned. Drank and drank of the honeyed, flower-scented mouth.
"We 'belong' ... oh, Morry! say we belong...." Belinda kept sobbing
without tears, the quick dry sobs of passion. "_I_ belong to _you_ body
and soul ... _you_ belong to _me_ body and soul ... don't you? don't you
... body and soul?..."
"Well ... chiefly body," said Loring thickly, with that short,
unpleasant laugh.