Part 29 (1/2)

She drew back. She raised one hand, its pink palm toward him.

”You should not have done this,” she said in a rapid whisper. ”How did you find me? How did you come here?” Her voice was kind, but steady.

Cartaret stood still. This he had not looked for. His cheeks were flushed, and the lines about his mouth deepened, as they always did at moments of crisis, and made his face very firm.

”Does it matter how?” he asked. ”Not all the width of the world could have kept me away. There's something I've got to know and know instantly.”

”But you should not have come, and you must go immediately!

Listen--no, listen to me now! I am not Vitoria Urola in these mountains; whether I want it or not, I have to be the Dona Dolorez Ethenard-Eskurola. That would perhaps sound amusing in the rue du Val de Grace; here it is a serious matter: the most serious matter in this little mountain-world. You will have to listen to me.”

Cartaret folded his arms.

”Go on,” he said.

”Last Winter,” she continued, her face challenging his, ”I had a time of rebellion against all these things amongst which I had been brought up. I had never been farther away from this place than Alegria, but I had had French and English governesses, and I read books and dreamed dreams. I loved to paint; I thought that I could learn to be a real artist, but I knew that my brother would think that a shame in an Eskurola and would never permit his unmarried sister to go to a foreign city to study. Nevertheless, I was hungry for the great world outside--for the real world--and so I took poor Chitta, gathered what jewels were my own and not family-jewels, and ran away.”

She looked from the window to the road that led into the valley; but the road was still deserted.

”Chitta sold the jewels,” she presently went on. ”They brought very little; but to me, who had never used money, it seemed much. We went to Paris: I and Chitta, who, because she had often been so far as Vitoria before, became as much my guardian as she was my servant--and I was long afraid to go but a little distance in the streets without her: the streets terrified me, and, after one fright, she made me promise to go nowhere without her. So we took the room that you know of. We were used to regarding my brother as all-powerful; we feared that he would find us. Therefore, we would let no one know who we were or whence we came. Now that is over.” Her voice trembled a little. She made a hopeless gesture. ”It is all over, and we have come back to our own people.” She raised her head proudly; she had regained her self-control: to Cartaret, she seemed to have regained an ancient pride. ”I have learned that I must be what I was born to be.”

He squared his jaw.

”A slave to your brother's will,” he said.

”A creature,” she answered with steady gaze--”a creature of the will of G.o.d.”

”But this is nonsense!” He came forward. ”This sort of thing may have been all very well in the Fourteenth Century; but we're living in the Twentieth, and it doesn't go now. Oh,”--he flung out a hand--”I know all about your old laws and traditions! I dare say they're extremely quaint and all that, and I dare say there was a time when they had some reason in them; but that time isn't this time, and I refuse to hear any more about them. I won't let them interfere with me.”

She flashed crimson.

”You speak for yourself, sir: permit me to speak for myself.”

His answer was to seize her hands.

”Let me go!” she ordered.

”I'll never let you go,” said he.

”Let me go. You are a brave man to restrain a woman! Shall I call a servant?”

She struggled fiercely, panting.

”I've got to make you understand me,” he protested, holding fast her hands. ”I didn't mean any harm to your traditions or your customs.

Whatever you love I'll try to love too--just so long as it doesn't hurt you. But _this_ does hurt you. Tell me one thing: Why did you leave Paris? What was it made you change your mind?” He saw in her face the signs of an effort to disregard the demand. ”Tell me why you left Paris,” he repeated.

Her eyes wavered. The lids fluttered.

”That night,” she began in an uneven tone, ”I gave you to understand, that night----”

”You gave me to understand that you loved me.”