Part 14 (1/2)

”It wouldn't interest you,” I apologized, melting at once to penitence.

Then for a moment came a wild up-sweep of emotion. It was one of those impulses which master men and, when the trend is violent, make the eyes swim with blood and the hand rise to murder. With me it swept to sentiment, and carried me uncontrollably in its undertow.

”I wish,” I said with an intensity which must have carried a note of wildness, ”I wish to G.o.d I were back on that island now!”

The perplexed questioning of her eyes steadied me again into self-command.

”I crave your pardon,” I said with a disingenuous laugh. ”It's the call of the wild.”

”Perhaps I understand something of that call,” was her enigmatical reply.

I wondered. Could she understand? This woman with the perfect drawing-room poise; this creature of exquisite art? Even if I were absolutely free to tell her the whole story, from Suez to the Golden Gate, how much and how little would it mean to her? Could she comprehend a pa.s.sion fired with no touch of the physical, painted horizon-wide against a canvas of cobalt sky? Perhaps not, but I wished as I had never wished any other thing that I might have been privileged to learn.

Her personality, even in silence, wove an aura of subtle magic about her. She wore at her breast several hot-house orchids. They were pale and exotic, quick wilting and artificial. Already the edges of their petals were curling and darkening. Was she like them? Could she have carried her splendid shoulders with the same grace through jungles and over mountains? Could she bloom with the wild splendor of those other orchids in the sterner environment of G.o.d's great out-of-doors?

She smiled as she questioned me.

”You are sceptical of my power to understand things, aren't you?”

”I was wondering,” I answered, ”just what you meant by it.”

”I meant,” she said slowly, as her eyes clouded again with that wistfulness which had a few moments before cost me my self-control, ”that civilized women lead even narrower lives than civilized men.

Maybe they feel even more strongly than men the longing for wider, freer things.”

”But in these times,” I inanely suggested, struggling to maintain the pretense of conversation, ”woman has a full measure of liberty.”

She tossed her head with an airy contempt for my reasoning and bent her eyes for a moment on the tip of her satin slipper. ”About as much as a canary in a cage,” she announced, ”and we are expected to sing joyously for our cuttle bone and hemp seed. I wonder that it never seems to occur to you men that we women may want something more than that; that we may not be satisfied after all to hear affectionate things chirped through the cage wires--that even human canaries may be able to conceive of some horizon broader than a window-sill with a pot or two of geraniums to give it color.”

I loved this woman. Why in all conscience did my heart leap almost triumphantly at the hint that she was restive in captivity? Was it merely because it was not I who was her captor? Was it jealousy feeding on the crumbs of a misery shared? There was a long silence.

She had been toying as she talked with a slender gold chain, and under an involuntary emphasis of her fingers it had given way. She was now trying to close the broken link with her teeth. I stepped forward and, without realizing that I was doing it, caught her hand in my restraining fingers. She looked up quickly.

”I beg your pardon,” I said hastily, ”but don't bite that with your teeth.”

”If I bite it at all,” she replied with impervious logic, ”I must bite it with my teeth.”

I took it from her and began the simple work of repair. The contact of my fingers had left me vibrating, and as I bent my face over the chain, my hands were trembling.

”Why,” she demanded in a soft voice, leaning back and clasping her hands behind her head, ”won't you tell me the story of your island?” Into the question crept a teasing note of whimsical insistence.

”Because,” I answered, ”there is a part of it which I couldn't tell you--and without that there is nothing to tell.”

”Will you tell me some other time when you know me better?” she inquired as naively as a little girl, pleading for a favorite fairy tale.

At every turn she flashed a new angle of herself to view. At one moment she was impressively regal, at the next an appealing, coaxing child; at one instant her eyes hinted at heart-hunger and at the next her lips knew no curves but those of laughter.

And yet there was a thing about it all that hurt and disappointed me.

With nothing tangible, there was still, in a subtle way, much which was sheer coquetry of eye and lip. It was invitation. Why did she challenge me to forbidden things so easy to say, so impossible to unsay? She must know that from the moment I saw her I had stood at a crisis; and that this was true only because I loved her. Such things need no words for their telling.