Part 26 (1/2)
”Can a man care much for two women at the same time?” he asked in a low voice.
She laughed with slow mockery.
Her faint perfume was wafted to his brain. He knew a besieging of the blood. Slowly he leaned forward, holding her eyes till the mockery faded from them. Then, very deliberately, he kissed her.
”How dare you!” she voiced softly in a kind of wonder not free from resentment. For with all her sensuous appeal the daughter of Joe Powers was not a woman with whom men took liberties.
”By the G.o.ds, why shouldn't I dare? We played a game and both of us have lost. You were to beckon and coolly flit, while I followed safely at a distance. Do you think me a marble statue? Do you think me too wooden for the strings of my heart to pulsate? By heaven, my royal Hebe, you have blown the fire in me to life. You must pay forfeit.”
”Pay forfeit?”
”Yes. I'm your servant no longer, but your lover and your master--and I intend to marry you.”
”How ridiculous,” she derided. ”Have you forgotten Alice?”
”I have forgotten everything but you--and that I'm going to marry you.”
She laughed a little tremulously. ”You had better forget that too. I'm like Alice. My answer is, 'No, thank you, kind sir.'”
”And my answer, royal Hebe, is this.” His hot lips met hers again in abandonment to the racing pa.s.sion in him.
”You--barbarian,” she gasped, pus.h.i.+ng him away.
”Perhaps. But the man who is going to marry you.”
She looked at him with a flash of almost shy curiosity that had the charm of an untasted sensation. ”Would you beat me?”
”I don't know.” He still breathed unevenly. ”I'd teach you how to live.”
”And love?” She was beginning to recover her lightness of tone, though the warm color still dabbed her cheeks.
”Why not?” His eyes were diamond bright. ”Why not? You have never known the great moments, the buoyant zest of living in the land that belongs only to the Heirs o Life.”
”And can you guide me there?” The irony in her voice was not untouched with wistfulness.
”Try me.”
She laughed softly, stepped to the table, and chose a cigarette. ”My friend, you promise impossibilities. I was not born to that incomparable company. To be frank, neither were you. Alice, grant you, belongs there.
And that mad cousin of yours. But not we two earth creepers. We're neither of us star dwellers. In the meantime”--she lit her Egyptian and stopped to make sure of her light every moment escaping more definitely from the glamor of his pa.s.sion--”you mentioned an engagement that was imperative. Don't let me keep you from it.”
CHAPTER 12
From The New Catechism
Question: What is the whole duty of man?
Answer: To succeed.