Part 47 (1/2)

Antony held her hand, looking at her, trying to see a deeper beauty in her face than was there, greater depths in her eyes than they could contain, more of the woman to fill his need and his loneliness. He realized how great that loneliness was and how demanding. She seemed like a child or a bird that he had caught ruthlessly.

”Didn't you drink just now to our friends.h.i.+p?”

She nodded, bit her lips, smiled, and her humour returned.

”Yes, I drank to our friends.h.i.+p.”

”Well,” he said, and hesitated, ”well....” He drew her a little toward him; she resisted faintly, and Fairfax stopped and quickly kissed her, a feeling of shame in his soul. He kissed her again, murmured something to her, and she kissed him. Then she pushed him gently away, her face crimson, her eyes full of tears.

”No, no,” she murmured, ”you shouldn't have done it. It is too awful.

It's unworthy. Ami,” she gasped, ”do you know you are the first man I ever let do that? Do you believe me?” She was clinging to his hands, half laughing, half sobbing, and the kiss was sweet, sweet, and the moment was sweet. To one of them it was eternal, and could never come in all her lifetime like that again.

He stifled his self-reproach. He would have taken her in his arms again, but she ran from him, swiftly, like the bird set free.

”Wait,” he called; ”Nora Scarlet, I promise.” He hurried to her. ”You forget I am a lame jackdaw.”

Then she stood still. They were walking together, his arm around her waist, when they came out at the alley's end. Standing by a marble bust on its pedestal, quite alone and meditative, as if she had just looked up, seen something and nevertheless decided to wait, Fairfax saw Mrs.

Faversham.

CHAPTER XIII

His first sensation, as he saw her, was as if a sudden light had broken upon a soul's darkness which until this moment had blinded him, oppressed him, condemned him; then there came a great revulsion against himself. Mrs. Faversham was very pale, as white as the bust by whose side she stood. She held out her hand, in its delicate glove, and tried to greet him naturally.

”How do you do, Mr. Rainsford?”

He was conscious of how kind she was, how womanly. He had refused her invitation and flaunted in her sight a vulgar pastoral. His cheeks were hot, his lips hardly formed a greeting. This was the work he had offered as an excuse to her when he had said that he could not go to Versailles.

”Then what is it to her?” he thought; ”she is engaged to be married to Cedersholm. What am I or my vulgarities to her?” There was a fresh revulsion.

”Will you let me present Miss Scarlet,” he said quietly, ”Mrs.

Faversham?”

Mrs. Faversham, who had recovered herself, gave her hand into the woollen glove of Nora Scarlet, and, looking at the young girl, said that perhaps they had been sketching.

”Not in January,” replied Nora with perfect self-possession. From the crown of Mrs. Faversham's fur hat to the lady's shoes, the girl's honest eyes had taken in her elegance and her grace. ”We have been walking a bit after Paris.”

Fairfax felt as though he had been separated from this lady for a long time, as though he had just come back, after a voyage whose details were tiresome. She seemed too divine to him and at once cruelly near and cruelly removed, in her dark dress, her small walking hat with a spray of mistletoe s.h.i.+ning against the fur, her faultless shoes, her face so sweet and high-bred under her veil, her aloofness from everything with which he came in contact, her freedom from care and struggle, from temptation, from the sordidness of which he had long been a part. He suffered horribly; short as the moment was, the acuteness of its sensations comprised for him a miserable eternity.

”I have my carriage here, Mr. Rainsford. Will you not let me drive you both back to Paris?”

He wanted nothing but to go with her then, any way, the farther the better, and for ever. It came upon him suddenly, and he knew it. He refused, of course, angry to be obliged to do so, angrier still at what he was sure she would think was the reason for his doing so. She bade them both good-bye, now thoroughly mistress of herself, and reminded him that she would expect him the next day at three. She asked Miss Scarlet many questions about her work and the schools, as they walked along a little together, before Mrs. Faversham took the path that led to the gate where her carriage waited.

When they were together again alone, Fairfax and his companion, in the tram, he felt as though he had cut himself off once again, by his folly, from everything desirable in the world. The night was cold. He did not realize how silent he was or how silent she was. When they had nearly reached Paris, Miss Scarlet said--