They were very quiet for some time after that storm of kisses had spent
itself. Morris leaned back languidly in a smooth hollow of the rocks.
Belinda leaned against him. Her head was on his breast, her arm clinging
close about him under his coat. The buckle of his waistcoat cut into her
arm, but she loved the bite of the little piece of metal that was warm
with his body. It amused and thrilled her both, to feel the everyday
intimacy of his clothing in this sharp pressure of the buckle that
nipped her soft forearm. And she loved the feeling of his strong, lean
waist breathing in the living girdle of her arm. She lay in a daze of
happiness, not thinking of the past or future, or even of the present
clearly. She was _being_ fully--she had no need of thought.
Morris's voice roused her with a start.
"See here, Linda," he was saying. "This is all very fine-- I'd be an
ungrateful beggar to complain if we'd only the present to consider. But
we've jolly well got to consider a good deal else."
"Oh, it'll all come straight of itself, Morry," she murmured drowsily.
"_Don't_ bother ... not now at any rate...."
"'_Now_' is just what's got to be bothered about, you reckless witch....
We'll have the house about our ears if we go on like this...."
"I don't care _what_ comes about my ears.... Your heart's under my ear
now--that's all I care about...."
"Linda! You really _are_ a reckless devilkin, aren't you?"
"Well ... isn't it nice to have me reckless about you?"
Loring gave his short laugh.
"Oh, it's 'nice' enough, I grant you. But nice things have a rather
cussed way of ending nastily, my dear."
"_This_ won't----"
"Come, Linda. Show a little gumption. You say you think Sophy probably
... er ... was probably in the next room ... yesterday. Well, granting
that, do you think things are going calmly on the way we like 'em?"
"Of course you'll have to have a plain talk with her," said Belinda, her
voice taking a practical note.
Morris gave her a little shake as she lay within his arm. She laughed
softly.
"My God! but you're a cool proposition," he said, half laughing, too,
half exasperated again.
"I'm not cool to _you_," wooed Belinda.
"No, you're not," he answered shortly. "And that's just the devil of it
for both of us!"
"Do you _want_ me to be cool?" teased Belinda.
"No, I don't. And that's the devil again."
"Well, what _do_ you want?"
He might have replied truthfully that what he wanted was for Lawlessness
and Law to kiss each other and abide in a beautiful serenity together.
But he had not formulated his own state of mind clearly enough to put it
thus. The worst part of his distress was that it was so "muddled." The
Son of Sirach could have explained it sternly to him. "Woe to the sinner
that goeth two ways," would have been his comment.
"See here, Linda," said Loring again. "You talk confoundedly chipper
about my 'having a plain talk' with Sophy. Have you thought what this
plain talk may lead to?"
"Divorce," said Belinda calmly.
Loring sprang up so violently that she was tilted from his side. He
clutched her just in time to keep her from rolling on to the pebbles.
"Look here," he said, very white. "I've been rather a cad to make love
to you as I've done ... but I'm not an out and out scoundrel."
Belinda faced him, as white as he, brow and hands clenched.
"You _will_ be," she said through her locked teeth, "if you don't
divorce and marry me."
"My God...." breathed Loring, actually bewildered by her utter disregard
of all principle. "Where'd you come from?... _What_ are you?..." He went
close and caught her fiercely by both arms. "_What_ are you, you little,
lawless wildfire?" he repeated.
"I'm your heart's desire ... your heart's desire...." she crooned, half
mocking, half cajoling.
He dropped her arms and turned away. The touch of her had set him in a
fever again. Nothing would come clearly to him. He raged against her in
his heart, but the tide of his blood set resistlessly towards her. He
stood with his back to her, biting his knuckles, glowering out at the
bright sea.
Belinda waited, with her little secret smile. She loved the aching of
her arms where his fierce grip had bruised her. She was very sure of
him. She waited for him to come back as patiently as a fisherman waits
for the up-rush of a pike that is sulking under the boat. Belinda rocked
gently in the boat of her own love, and waited with smiling patience for
her sulky lover to rejoin her.
But when Loring did finally turn to her again, his mood was not at all
the lover's. He spoke with hard, deliberate precision, biting off the
words at her, as it were.
"If you expect me to insult a woman like Sophy and ruin her life to
please you, you're rather thoroughly mistaken," he said.
Belinda eyed him curiously. Then she made a great mistake. Instinct had
kept her from making it before. Now self-will smothered instinct. She
was so bent on making Morris see this question as she saw it, and
without further loss of time, that she had recourse to an heroic method.
"Are you _really_ as blind as you seem to be, Morry?" she asked.
"'Blind'?" said Loring, rather taken aback.
"Exactly--stone blind."
He said with stiffness:
"I don't catch your meaning."
"Well ... do you _really_ think that Sophy will mind divorcing?"
Loring stared at her blankly. Then he flushed.
"Are you insinuating that she doesn't care for me?" he demanded.
Belinda eyed him again in that sly, incredulous way. Then she said:
"And do you mean to tell me that you haven't noticed a thing of what's
going on between her and the dago?"
"What the devil are you after?" he cried angrily. "I'll thank you not to
hint things about Sophy. She's as high above you as the stars--that's
what!"
"Oh--a kite's high above me, too," said Belinda airily. "What I'm
'hinting' as you call it is only what any one with eyes in his head
couldn't help seeing."
"Come ... speak out!" said Loring roughly.
Belinda gave a sharp sigh, as of disgusted patience.
"Why any _baby_ can see that she and Amaldi are in love with each
other," she flung at him. "Now why do you gape at me like that? I dare
say it began years ago--in Italy, where she saw so much of him...."
Loring could not articulate.
"_Amaldi!_" he stammered at last. "Why, the fellow's sweet on _you_!"
"Pooh!" said Belinda. "He only flirted about with me a bit to make her
jealous...."
"To make ... _Sophy_ ... jealous?"
Loring was talking like a sleep-walker, slowly, with thick utterance.
Belinda began to feel a little uneasy at the very potent effect of her
disclosure. This was a queer, new Morris staring at her. She might have
been a phonograph that contained some record important to him, for all
the consciousness of her personality in his blank stare. He looked at
her a good deal as a man looks at the nearest object when coming to
after a severe blow on the head. This stare of his irritated Belinda and
rather scared her at the same time. Had she gone too far? What was there
in it so shocking for Morry, since he loved _her_, Belinda? She had
thought that he would jump at the easy solution of their problem that it
afforded.
She went up to him, and laid her hand on his breast.
"Wake up, Morry...." she said. "Why in the world should you take it like
this? You look positively doped...."
Morris caught her hand in a grip that was too painful, even for
Belinda's amorous temperament. She gave an angry little miaul of pain.
"Linda ... you little fiend!..." he was saying hoarsely. "You've made
this up.... I know you ... all the tricks of the trade.... What d'you
mean by it, eh? What do you mean by slandering my wife?..." He shook her
to and fro. "Eh?... Tell me that.... What d'you mean?... How d'you
dare?... Eh?... Tell me that...."
Belinda gave him back his savage looks full measure.
"You're a fool...." she sobbed, raging. "You're just a common or garden
fool, Morry! I can't help that, can I? Let me go!... It's not my fault
if you're a fool ... a fool ... a fool...."
He flung her from him so that she stumbled. He saw red ... black ... red
again. He felt choking--murderous. Mere sensual love runs like this,
from desire to hate and back again, to and fro, "swifter than a weaver's
shuttle." At the present moment he had only hate for Belinda. She
herself had lashed awake his jealousy for another woman by her
miscalculated cunning. Sophy was his--_his_. How dare she so much as
look at another man? And this little devil dared to say that she
loved.... He was really transfigured by rage. Even Belinda the dauntless
shrank from him. She had unstopped a very small vessel of malice and out
of it had arisen a black smoke obscuring all her golden heaven of love,
and congealing before her into this fierce, wry-faced Afrit of a man.
She had never seen the male in the grip of real jealousy before--the
man-tiger sensing the defection of his mate. It horrified her,
infuriated her, filled her with a curiously helpless sense of dismay.
He turned suddenly and strode away from her. Then she found her voice
again.
"Morry!" she called. "Morry!"
He paid not the slightest heed. She ran after him, caught him up,
panting.
"_Don't_ go off half-cocked like this," she gasped, running at his side,
for he was literally running himself now over the rough shingle. "I
never meant to hint anything really _wrong_ you know."
She might have been the waves that babbled along the shore.
"What are you going to do?... Don't do anything now.... You'll be
sorry...."
He ran on. She kept up with him. They looked quite splendid, running
shoulder to shoulder through the fresh morning air, against the
background of glinting water.
"Morry ... _answer_ me...."
She was less to him than the air; he had to breathe the air--he had no
need for Belinda just then, in any way. But when they had reached the
levels where other people passed to and fro, he turned on her. He really
looked dangerous. All the brute was up in him--all in him that a man at
Polo had once called "howling cad." This cad now howled at Belinda. She
cowered under it.
"I guess even _you_ know when a man's had enough of you," he flung in
her white face. She dropped back as though she had been spat upon. He
strode on, exulting to be rid of her.