Part 48 (1/2)
”Yes,” he admitted, lamely: ”I saw you pa.s.sing the jetty. I followed--naturally. I have just come from America.”
”Oh.” Her voice expressed no surprise. ”You came for me, Peter?”
”I thought you were dead,” he confessed.
”Well, I am a hard one to kill!” A tiny smile flickered across her fine lips. ”You are not married--to Eileen?”
”No--and never!” he said dully.
”But you must be in love! You are always in love--with some one.”
”I am in love with no one.”
”Not even----”
”I am in love with no one.”
”Nor am I,” said Romola Borria quietly. It seemed to come from her as a vast and reluctant confession. ”I loved only one man, and my love for him is quite dead. If I should rake over the embers--oh, but I have raked them over, Peter, many, many times--and I have found not one single small ember glowing! When love dies, you know, it requires a great fire to rekindle it. Oh, I have suffered!”
”He--is dead?”
She smiled again, rather ironically. ”Can a man live with a bullet in his heart?”
”I--I saw. I thought--but what does it matter what I thought?” He was trying to inject some of his old spirit into his voice. It was rather difficult, this business of laughing at the funeral of love. ”Romola, you are more beautiful!”
”I have suffered,” she said, in the same restrained voice.
He turned away with a shrug. He, too, had suffered, but in a somewhat different light. He was examining with a professional eye the heap of apparatus which was arranged in splendid order along the back of the small room.
”I am studying. You see, Peter,” she explained, in the same rather recriminatory tones, ”I was rather fond of you at one time----”
”Romola, please----”
”And because it was your profession I became interested in it. I heard the message you sent last night--to--to the place on Jen Kee Road. I was quite worried for a while.”
”That was why you happened along the bund about the time the boat came up-river?”
”Perhaps.” She smiled vaguely.
”You wanted to find out if I still cared enough for you to----”
”Follow me? Yes, Peter; I think that was why.”
”Then you didn't know I was on my way to China?”
”No, Peter, I knew nothing.”
”Aren't you connected with my good friend, the man with the sea-lion mustaches, in Len Yang?”
Romola gave a short gasp. ”I never was connected with him.”