Part 66 (1/2)

All at once, in answer to the humour in his eyes, to the playful bright look, the tragedy and the pa.s.sion which had flown out from her old self like the flame that flares out of an opened furnace-door, sank back again, the door closed, and all her senses were cooled as by a gentle wind.

Her eyes met his, and the invitation in them was like the call of the thirsty harvester in the sunburnt field. With an abandon, as startling as it was real and true to her nature, she sank down to the floor and buried her face in her hands at his feet. She sobbed deeply, softly.

With an exclamation of gladness and welcome he bent over her and drew her close to him, and his hands soothed her trembling shoulders.

”Peace is the best thing of all, Jasmine,” he whispered. ”Peace.”

They were the last words that Ian had addressed to her. It did not make her shrink now that both had said to her the same thing, for both knew her, each in his own way, better than she had ever known herself; and each had taught her in his own way, but by what different means!

All at once, with a start, she caught Rudyard's arm with a little spasmodic grasp.

”I did not kill Adrian Fellowes,” she said, like a child eager to be absolved from a false imputation. She looked up at him simply, bravely.

”Neither did I,” he answered gravely, and the look in his eyes did not change. She noted that.

”I know. It was--”

She paused. What right had she to tell!

”Yes, we both know who did it,” he added. ”Al'mah told me.”

She hid her head in her hands again, while he hung over her wisely waiting and watching.

Presently she raised her head, but her swimming eyes did not seek his.

They did not get so high. After one swift glance towards his own, they dropped to where his heart might be, and her voice trembled as she said:

”Long ago Alice Tynemouth said I ought to marry a man who would master me. She said I needed a heavy hand over me--and the shackles on my wrists.”

She had forgotten that these phrases were her own; that she had used them concerning herself the night before the tragedy.

”I think she was right,” she added. ”I had never been mastered, and I was all childish wilfulness and vanity. I was never worth while. You took me too seriously, and vanity did the rest.”

”You always had genius,” he urged, gently, ”and you were so beautiful.”

She shook her head mournfully. ”I was only an imitation always--only a dresden-china imitation of the real thing I might have been, if I had been taken right in time. I got wrong so early. Everything I said or did was mostly imitation. It was made up of other people's acts and words. I could never forget anything I'd ever heard; it drowned any real thing in me. I never emerged--never was myself.”

”You were a genius,” he repeated again. ”That's what genius does. It takes all that ever was and makes it new.”

She made a quick spasmodic protest of her hand. She could not bear to have him praise her. She wanted to tell him all that had ever been, all that she ought to be sorry for, was sorry for now almost beyond endurance. She wanted to strip her soul bare before him; but she caught the look of home in his eyes, she was at his knees at peace, and what he thought of her meant so much just now--in this one hour, for this one hour. She had had such hard travelling, and here was a rest-place on the road.

He saw that her soul was up in battle again, but he took her arms, and held them gently, controlling her agitation. Presently, with a great sigh, her forehead drooped upon his hands. They were in a vast theatre of war, and they were part of it; but for the moment sheer waste of spirit and weariness of soul made peace in a turbulent heart.

”It's her real self--at last,” he kept saying to himself, ”She had to have her chance, and she has got it.”

Outside in a dark corner of the veranda, Al'mah was in reverie. She knew from the silence within that all was well. The deep peace of the night, the thing that was happening in the house, gave her a moment's surcease from her own problem, her own arid loneliness. Her mind went back to the night when she had first sung ”Mana.s.sa” at Covent Garden.

The music s.h.i.+mmered in her brain. She essayed to hum some phrases of the opera which she had always loved, but her voice had no resonance or vibration. It trailed away into a whisper.

”I can't sing any more. What shall I do when the war ends? Or is it that I am to end here with the war?” she whispered to herself.... Again reverie deepened. Her mind delivered itself up to an obsession. ”No, I am not sorry I killed him,” she said firmly after a long time, ”If a price must be paid, I will pay it.”

Buried in her thoughts, she was scarcely conscious of voices near by.