Part 13 (1/2)
While he was placing the garment upon the back of a chair, she slipped a little key into her hand-bag. He looked at her with a question in his eyes.
”Yes,” she replied, ”I kept the key; but I had not dreamed that I would ever again cross this threshold.”
Meanwhile it had grown quite dark. The reflection of the street lanterns without dimly lit the room, and through the twilight fantastic shadows seemed to dance.
The perfume of her hair pervaded the room and filled the boy's heart with romance. Tenderness long suppressed called with a thousand voices.
The hour, the strangeness and unexpectedness of her visit, perhaps even a boy's pardonable vanity, roused pa.s.sion from its slumbers and once again wrought in Ernest's soul the miracle of love. His arm encircled her neck and his lips stammered blind, sweet, crazy and caressing things.
”Turn on the light,” she pleaded.
”You were not always so cruel.”
”No matter, I have not come to speak of love.”
”Why, then, have you come?”
Ernest felt a little awkward, disappointed, as he uttered these words.
What could have induced her to come to his rooms? He loosened his hold on her and did as she asked.
How pale she looked in the light, how beautiful! Surely, she had sorrowed for him; but why had she not answered his letter? Yes, why?
”Your letter?” She smiled a little sadly. ”Surely you did not expect me to answer that?”
”Why not?” He had again approached her and his lips were close to hers.
”Why not? I have yearned for you. I love you.”
His breath intoxicated her; it was like a subtle perfume. Still she did not yield.
”You love me now--you did not love me then. The music of your words was cold--machine-made, strained and superficial. I shall not answer, I told myself: in his heart he has forgotten you. I did not then realise that a dangerous force had possessed your life and crushed in your mind every image but its own.”
”I don't understand.”
”Do you think I would have come here if it were a light matter? No, I tell you, it is a matter of life and death to you, at least as an artist.”
”What do you mean by that?”
”Have you done a stroke of work since I last saw you?”
”Yes, let me see, surely, magazine articles and a poem.”
”That is not what I want to know. Have you accomplished anything big?
Have you grown since this summer? How about your novel?”
”I--I have almost finished it in my mind, but I have found no chance to begin with the actual writing. I was sick of late, very sick.”
No doubt of it! His face was pinched and pale, and the lines about the mouth were curiously contorted, like those of a man suffering from a painful internal disease.