Part 23 (1/2)

She drew herself away from him, half-frightened still and half petulant.

”You used to be--ever so much nicer than you are now,” she said, keeping her face averted.

He answered her sombrely as he turned away, ”I used to have a wife that I honoured before all creation.”

She sprang to her feet. ”d.i.c.k! How can you be so horrid?”

He shrugged his shoulders as he walked to the door. ”I was--a big fool,”

he said very bitterly.

The door closed upon him. Netta stood staring at it, tragic and tear-stained.

Suddenly she stamped her foot and whirled round in a rage. ”I won't be treated like a naughty child! I won't--I won't! I'll write to my Arabian Knight--I'll write now--and tell him how wretched I am! If d.i.c.k objects to our friends.h.i.+p I'll just leave him, that's all. I was a donkey ever to marry him. I always knew we shouldn't get on.”

She paused, listening, half-fearing, half-hoping, that she had heard him returning. Then she heard his voice in the next room. He was talking to Tessa.

She set her lips and went to her writing-table. ”Oh yes, he can make it up with his child when he knows he has been brutal; but never a single kind word to his wife--not one word!”

She took up a pen with fingers that trembled with indignation, and began to write.

CHAPTER IX

THE OASIS

For two months Tommy possessed his impulsive soul in patience. For two months he watched Monck go his impa.s.sive and inscrutable way, asking no further question. The gaieties of the station were in full swing.

Christmas was close at hand.

Stella was making definite plans for departure in the New Year. She could not satisfy herself with an idle life, though Tommy vehemently opposed the idea of her going. Monck never opposed it. He listened silently when she spoke of it, sometimes faintly smiling. She often saw him. He came to the Green Bungalow in Tommy's company at all hours of the day. She met him constantly at the Club, and he never failed to come to her side there and by some means known only to himself to banish the crowd of subalterns who were wont to gather round her. He a.s.serted no claim, but the claim existed and was mutely recognized. He never spoke to her intimately. He never attempted to pa.s.s the bounds of ordinary friends.h.i.+p. Only very rarely did he make her aware that her company was a pleasure to him. But the fact remained that she was the only woman that he ever sought, and the tongues of all the rest were busy in consequence.

As for Stella, she still told herself that she would escape with her freedom. He would speak, she was convinced, before she left. She even sometimes told herself that after what had pa.s.sed between them, it was almost inc.u.mbent upon him to speak. But she believed that he would accept her refusal philosophically, possibly even with relief. She restrained herself forcibly from dwelling upon the thought of him. Again and again she reminded herself that he trod the way of ambition. His heart was given to his work, and a man may not serve two masters. He cared for her, probably, but in a calm, judicial fas.h.i.+on that could never satisfy her. If she married him she would come second--and a very poor second--to his profession. And so she did not mean to marry him.

And so she checked the fevered memory of pa.s.sionate kisses that had burned her to the soul, of arms that had clasped and held her by a force colossal. That had been only the primitive man in him, escaped for the moment beyond his control--the primitive man which he had well-nigh succeeded in stifling with the bonds of his servitude. Had he not told her that he would have given all he had to forget that single wild lapse into savagery? She was sure that he despised himself for it. He would never for an instant suffer such an impulse again. He did not really love her. It was not in him to love any woman. He would make her a formal offer of marriage, and when she had refused him he would dismiss the matter from his mind and return to his work undisturbed.

So she schooled herself to make her plans, leaving him out of the reckoning, telling herself ever that her newly restored freedom was too dear ever to be sacrificed again. In Mrs. Ralston's company she attended some of the social gatherings of the station, but she took no keen pleasure in them. She disliked Lady Harriet, she distrusted Mrs. Burton, and more often than not she remained away. The coming Christmas festivities did not attract her. She held aloof till Tommy who was in the thick of everything suddenly and vehemently demanded her presence.

”It's ridiculous to be so stand-offish,” he maintained. ”Don't let 'em think you're afraid of 'em! Come anyway to the moonlight picnic at Khanmulla on Christmas Eve! It's going to be no end of a game.”

Stella smiled a little. ”Do you know, Tommy, I think I'd rather go to bed?”

”Absurd!” declared Tommy. ”You used to be much more sporting.”

”I wasn't a widow in those days,” Stella said.

”What rot! What d.a.m.n' rot!” cried Tommy wrathfully.

”There is no altering the fact,” said Stella.

He left her, fuming.