Part 44 (1/2)

”'Anywhere--anywhere--out of the world!'”

”Kitty!” Startled by the abandonment of her words, Ashe caught her hands and held them. ”Kitty!--- you regret--”

”That man? Do I?” She opened her eyes, frowning. ”I loathe him! When I think of yesterday, I could drown myself. If I could pile the whole world between him and me--I would. But”--she s.h.i.+vered--”but yet--if he were sitting there--”

”You would be once more under the spell?” said Ashe, bitterly.

”Spell!” she repeated, with scorn. Then s.n.a.t.c.hing her hands from his, she threw back the hair from her temples with a wild gesture. ”I warned you,” she said--”I warned you.”

”A man doesn't pay much attention to those warnings, Kitty.”

”Then it is not my fault. I don't know what's wrong with me,” she said, sombrely; ”but I remember saying to you that sometimes my brain was on fire. I seem to be always in a hurry--in a desperate, desperate hurry!--to know or to feel something--while there is still time--before one dies. There is always a pa.s.sion--always an effort. More life--_more life_!--even if it lead to pain--and agony--and tears.”

She raised her strange, beautiful eyes, which had at the moment almost a look of delirium, and fixed them on his face. But Ashe's impression was that she did not see him.

He was conscious of the same pang, the same sudden terror that he had felt on that never-to-be-forgotten evening when she had talked to him of the mask in the ”Tempest.” He thought of the Blackwater stories he had heard from Lord Grosville. ”_Mad, my dear fellow, mad!_”--the old man's frequent comment ran through his memory. Was there, indeed, some unsound spot in Kitty?

He sat dumb and paralyzed for a moment; then, recovering himself, he said, as he recaptured the cold little hands:

”'More _light_,' Kitty, was what Goethe said, in dying. A better prayer, don't you think?”

There was a strong, even a stern insistence in his manner which quieted Kitty. Her face as it came back to full consciousness was exquisitely sweet and mournful.

”That's the prayer of the _calm_,” she said, in a whisper, ”and my nature is hunger and storm. And Geoffrey Cliffe is the same. That's why I couldn't help being--”

She sprang up.

”William, don't let's talk nonsense. I can't ever see that man again.

How's it to be done?”

She moved up and down--all practical energy and impatience--her mood wholly altered. His own adapted itself to hers.

”For the present, fear nothing,” he said, dryly. ”For his own sake Cliffe will hold his tongue and leave London. And as to the future--I can get some message conveyed to him--by a man he won't disregard. Leave it to me.”

”You can't write to him, William!” cried Kitty, pa.s.sionately.

”Leave it to me,” he repeated. ”Then suppose you take the boy--and Margaret French--to Haggart till I can join you?”

”And your mother?” she said, timidly, coming to stand beside him and laying a hand on each shoulder.

”Leave that also to me.”

”How she'll hate the sight of me,” she said, under her breath. Then, with another tone of voice--”How long, William, do you give the government?”

”Six months, perhaps--perhaps less. I don't see how they can last beyond February.”

”And then--we'll _fight_!” said Kitty, with a long breath, smoothing back the hair from his brow.

”Allow me, please, to command the forces! Well, now then, I must be off!” He tried to rise, but she still held him.