Part 26 (1/2)

There was a short and agonizing pause in which both listened, without hearing it, to the sound of the wheels of a _fiacre_, drawing up outside the door of the hotel.

”Say 'yes,'” repeated young Awdas, more urgently, ”or I clear right out.”

”_Better_,” she forced herself to murmur.

”Better?----And if I go, I won't remember what you did for me that night. I shall try to forget it; d'you hear? I shall try----”

”Don't,” she said, very low. ”I couldn't forget it if I tried.”

”_Ah!_” It broke from him exultantly. ”Then you do care! I knew you would, I knew I could make you! The other was rot; I knew you did.”

She threw her head back and aside; she made a last struggle. She would have risen.

”No, you don't,” he triumphed. ”Now say 'yes,' and then perhaps you may get up, darling; _darling_----!”

At the delight of hearing it from his lips she shut her eyes even as a sweetheart of little Olwen's age might have done. It was her moment of ecstasy, poignant and ageless and pure....

A moment only.

There broke into it footsteps and a girl's voice, a charming voice, but of an inflection most un-English.

”Why, yes! Wasn't I expected? I wrote the hotel anyway.... _J'ai ecrit_.... Miss Golden van Huysen.... Oh, pardon me----”

Mrs. Cartwright's eyes had opened upon something that seemed like a sunburst breaking in upon the dim and formal, Frenchily-furnished lounge. A vision it was of gold and colour. Radiance seemed to emanate from it--from her.... For it was just a girl, a blonde and generously-built girl, whose coat, thrown open, showed a crisp light uniform with the Red Cross. Her head, proudly carried, was backed by the hanging lamp that made a glory around it, and Miss Golden van Huysen, self-introduced, might have stood for a symbolical figure of Young America breaking into the War, descending upon the Old Continent with help in her hands.

She moved, and the light fell directly on her face. It had the contours and the bloom of a peach, and under her slouch hat her eyes, large and wonderfully wide apart, shone out with candour and young eagerness for life. Yes, youth, youth! That was the keynote of her. That, and the sweetness of honey, coloured like her hair; the kindliness of milk, white as her skin.

Mrs. Cartwright, with doom at her heart, looked at this young girl. So did Jack Awdas, who had sprung to his feet and off the wicker chair-arm.

The girl frankly returned the glances of the lady sitting back there, and of the boyish English officer who was (as she ingenuously put it to herself) ”the loveliest looking young man she'd ever seen.”

Jack Awdas did not know that he was staring almost rudely.... Mrs.

Cartwright knew. She also knew what a kiss had been interrupted by that look at another.

And when the bustle of this arrival and of Madame and the _cha.s.seur_ and the ”grips” and the Franco-American explanations had died away to the first landing, it was Mrs Cartwright, standing, who spoke.

She spoke quite lightly and with a smile on her lips. She came of soldier people.

”Dear Jack, there's nothing more to be said. I know I'm right. But _you_ needn't go. I'm going instead. I must get back to my boys for half-term.

I shall be off early in the morning, so this is good-bye.”

”But----” he protested, in a voice that was not quite that of five minutes before.

”No. That's all. I hope----No, don't come with me. Good night!”

Before he knew, she was gone.

CHAPTER XVII