Part 21 (1/2)
She looked up at him in a dazed way when he came in with the tea and bread. He set the tin tray on her bureau and came over to the bedside.
”Eve,” he said, ”you look very white and ill. Have you been hurt somewhere, and haven't you admitted it?”
She seemed unable to speak, and he took both her hands and looked anxiously into the lovely, pallid features.
After a moment she turned her head and buried her face in the pillow, trembling now in overwhelming realization of what she had endured for the sake of two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate hidden under a bush in the forest.
For a long while the girl lay there, the feverish flush of tears on her partly hidden face, her nervous hands tremulous, restless, now seeking his, convulsively, now striving to escape his clasp--eloquent, uncertain little hands that seemed to tell so much and yet were telling him nothing he could understand.
”Eve, dear,” he said, ”are you in pain? What is it that has happened to you? I thought you were all right. You seemed all right----”
”I am,” she said in a smothered voice. ”You'll stay here with me, won't you?”
”Of course I will. It's just the reaction. It's all over. You're relaxing. That's all, dear. You're safe. Nothing can harm you now----”
”Please don't leave me.”
After a moment: ”I won't leave you.... I wish I might never leave you.”
In the tense silence that followed her trembling ceased. Then his heart, heavy, irregular, began beating so that the startled pulses in her body awoke, wildly responsive.
Deep emotions, new, unfamiliar, were stirring, awaking, confusing them both. In a sudden instinct to escape, she turned and partly rose on one elbow, gazing blindly about her out of tear-marred eyes.
”I want my room to myself,” she murmured in a breathless sort of way, ”--I want you to go out, please----”
A boyish flush burnt his face. He got up slowly, took his rifle from the corner, went out, closing the door, and seated himself on the stairs.
And there, on guard, sat Trooper Stormont, rigid, unstirring, hour after hour, facing the first great pa.s.sion of his life, and stunned by the impact of its swift and unexpected blow.
In her chamber, on the bed's edge, sat Eve Strayer, her deep eyes fixed on s.p.a.ce. Vague emotions, exquisitely recurrent, new born, possessed her. The whole world, too, all around her seemed to have become misty and golden and all pulsating with a faint, still rhythm that indefinably thrilled her pulses to response.
Pa.s.sion, full-armed, springs flaming from the heart of man. Woman is slow to burn. And it was the delicate phantom of pa.s.sion that Eve gazed upon, there in her unpainted chamber, her sun-tanned fingers linked listlessly in her lap, her little feet like bruised white flowers drooping above the floor.
Hour after hour she sat there dreaming, staring at the tinted ghost of Eros, rose-hued, near-smiling, unreal, impalpable as the dusty sunbeam that slanted from her window, gilding the boarded floor.
Three spectres, gliding near, paused to gaze at State Trooper Stormont, on guard by the stairs. Then they looked at the closed door of Eve's chamber.
Then the three spectres, Fate, Chance and Destiny, whispering together, pa.s.sed on toward the depths of the sunset forest.
EPISODE FIVE
DROWNED VALLEY
I