Part 14 (1/2)

Living a romance is less alluring than writing one: Masters found it so.

He had been wont to believe in the parts he cast his characters for. He was learning!

Stumbling up the steps on to the wall, he started to walk home. But he halted, suddenly, before he had taken half-a-dozen paces. No drill sergeant's command ever brought up an absent-minded beggar on parade as did the words which fell on his ear.

”I thought that was you, Mr. Masters!”

Her voice! The voice of his shattered idol! The same voice: just as fresh and soft and kind as ever! Her voice, speaking to him! Could it be? Or was it a dream simply, a chimera of his brain? Or was this voice--this voice ringing, singing in his ears now--the result of his highly fevered imagination only?

He feared to turn his head to see. To know whether it was in reality the woman for whom he had been ready to lay down his life--whom he had considered a princess among women; chaste, pure, modest; whose dethronation had been so recent. Whom he had come to think of as soiled.

Yes! She was there before him in the fles.h.!.+ This perfidious parody of perfection, this trans.m.u.ted ideal. He waited for a moment motionless; then raised his cap--a merely mechanical act.

Besides, being a woman, whatever else she might be, she was exempt from rudeness at his hands.

Her s.e.x protected her.

CHAPTER XII

MISUNDERSTANDINGS

”Aren't you going to sit on Our Seat? Or don't you need a rest?”

It was said archly; the significant reference to Our Seat, subtly conveyed. She seemed to have shaken off the depression of yesterday. Was herself; her own blithe, bright self again.

Mechanically Masters accepted the implied invitation; sat. There ensued silence; a silence which told more than speech. Not the silence which breathes of sweet accord between two understanding hearts.

She, on her part, was filled with wonder--expectancy--an undefined sense of something being wrong. He was not insensible of the fact that the plumage of his dove was rustling. No woman could, of course, endure such treatment.

The need for speech on his part was plain: but, somehow, he was at a loss for words. Was yet alive to the fact that she would read his speechlessness her own way: would set him down as guilty of caddish behaviour. The silence became tense: the strain was fast becoming unbearable.

But little time pa.s.sed; she got to her feet--being the kind of woman quick to take offence. The insult was felt the more acutely because, she told herself, she was alone to blame: had simply courted it, brought it on herself.

She had wanted to meet this man. Had hurried on to the parade with the feeling in her heart that it would be good to meet him. Had sat on the seat for a minute's rest and a faint sense of grief that she had not encountered him on her walk. Had been thinking disconsolately of walking home, when she was rendered joyful by his presence.

And then--to be treated like that! Had she offended him? Such a possibility pa.s.sed rapidly through her mind; was as rapidly rejected as a theory untenable. Did he disapprove of her coming there alone, at that time?

She knew that some men were punctilious in regard to such matters. But he--natural, unconventional as he was himself--surely it could not be that. His voice interrupted her reflections. In a husky, strained tone, looking neither right nor left, but aimlessly in front of him, he said:

”Nice, fine evening, isn't it?”

Another credit note to our fickle climate! But the utter incongruity of the remark, the exceedingly strange tone of his voice, caused her to wheel round and look at him. Then she saw. The moon chanced to be free from clouds just then; its pale beams accentuated the lividity of Masters' face.

”Oh, my G.o.d! you are ill! What has happened--an accident? What can I do for you?”

As she was quick of thought so she was quick of movement. In a moment was kneeling beside him--all the annoyance and hastily-aroused temper gone to the winds. Only her helpful woman's instinct aching to be of service to him: to the man she loved.

”It is nothing. Don't--please. Don't worry yourself.”