Part 70 (1/2)

And then, even as she started up in a wild horror, a voice spoke to her, a hand touched her, and her fear was stayed.

”Stella!” the voice said, and steady fingers came up out of the darkness and closed upon her arm.

Her heart gave one great leap within her, and was still. She did not speak in answer, for she could not. She could only sit in the darkness and wait. If it were a dream, it would pa.s.s--ah, so swiftly! If it were reality, surely, surely he would speak again!

He spoke--softly through the silence. ”I don't want to startle you. Are you startled? I've put out the lamp. You are not afraid?”

Her voice came back to her; her heart jerked on, beating strangely, spasmodically, like a maimed thing. ”Am I awake?” she said. ”Is it--really--you?”

”Yes,” he said. ”Can you listen to me a moment? You won't be afraid?”

She quivered at the repeated question. ”Everard--no!”

He was silent then, as if he did not know how to continue. And she, finding her strength, leaned to him in the darkness, feeling for him, still hardly believing that it was not a dream.

He took her wandering hand and held it imprisoned. The firmness of his grasp rea.s.sured her, but it came to her that his hands were cold; and she wondered.

”I have something to say to you,” he said.

She sat quite still in his hold, but it frightened her. ”Where are you?”

she whispered.

”I am just--kneeling by your side,” he said. ”Don't tremble--or be afraid! There is nothing to frighten you. Stella,” his voice came almost in a whisper. ”Hanani--the _ayah_--told you something in the ruined temple at Khanmulla. Can you remember what it was?”

”Ah!” she said. ”Do you mean about--Ralph Dacre?”

”I do mean that,” he said. ”I don't know if you actually believed it.

It may have sounded--fantastic. But--it was true.”

”Ah!” she said again. And then she knew why he had turned out the lamp.

It was that he might not see her face when he told her--or she his.

He went on; his hold upon her had tightened, but she knew that he was unconscious of it. It was as if he clung to her in anguish--though she heard no sign of suffering in his low voice. ”I have done the utmost to keep the truth from you--but Fate has been against me all through. I sent him away from you in the first place because I heard--too late--that he had a wife in England. I married you because--” he paused momentarily--”ah well, that doesn't come into the story,” he said. ”I married you, believing you free. Then came Bernard, and told me that the wife--Dacre's wife--had died just before his marriage to you. That also came--too late.”

He stopped again, and she knew that his head was bowed upon his arms though she could not free her hand to touch it.

”You know the rest,” he said, and his voice came to her oddly broken and unfamiliar. ”I kept it from you. I couldn't bear the thought of your facing--that,--especially after--after the birth of--the child. Even when you found out I had tricked you in that native rig-out, I couldn't endure the thought of your knowing. I nearly killed myself that night.

It seemed the only way. But Bernard stopped me. I told him the truth.

He said I was wrong not to tell you. But--somehow--I couldn't.”

”Oh, I wish--I wish you had,” she breathed.

”Do you? Well,--I couldn't. It's hard enough to tell you now. You were so wonderful, so beautiful, and they had flung mud at you from the beginning. I thought I had made you safe, dear, instead of--dragging you down.”

”Everard!” Her voice was quick and pa.s.sionate. She made a sudden effort and freed one hand; but he caught it again sharply.

”No, you mustn't, Stella! I haven't finished. Wait!”

His voice compelled her; she submitted hardly knowing that she did so.