Part 38 (1/2)

”Now,” she finished, rising, ”I think I'll take your advice, and go and rest till she comes. That's my door, just opposite. I chose the room for its convenience in receiving Dorothea. You'll be sure to call me, won't you, the minute you hear the sound of wheels?”

He had sat gazing up at her, but now he, too, rose. It was a minute at which their common anxiety regarding Dorothea slipped temporarily into the background, allowing the main question at issue between them to a.s.sert itself; but it a.s.serted itself silently. He had meant to speak, but he could only look. She had meant to withdraw, but she remained to return his look with the lingering, quiet, steady gaze which time and place and circ.u.mstance seemed to make the most natural mode of expression for the things that were vital between them. What pa.s.sed thus defied all a.n.a.lysis of thought, as well as all utterance in language, but it was understood by each in his or her own way. To her it was the greeting and farewell of souls in different spheres, who again pa.s.s one another in s.p.a.ce. For him it was the dumb, stifled cry of nature, the claim of a heart demanding its rightful place in another heart, the protest of love that has been debarred from its return by a cruel code of morals, a preposterous convention, grown suddenly meaningless to a woman like her and to a man like him. Something like this it would have been a relief to him to cry out, had not the strong hand of custom been upon him and forced him to say that which was far below the pressure of his yearning.

”This isn't the time to talk about what I owe you,” he said, feeling the insufficiency of his words; ”it's too much to be disposed of in a few phrases.”

”On the contrary, you owe me nothing at all.”

”We'll not dispute the point now.”

”No; but I'd rather not leave you under a misapprehension. If I've done anything to-night--been of any use at all--it's been simply because I loved Dorothea--and--and--it was right. When it was in my power, I couldn't have refused to do it for any one--for any one, you understand.”

”Oh yes, I understand perfectly; but _any one_, in the same circ.u.mstances, would feel as I do. No, not as I do,” he corrected, quickly. ”No one else in the world could feel--”

”I'm really very tired,” she said, hurriedly; ”I'll go now; but I count on you to call me.”

He watched her while she glided across the room; but it was only when her door had closed and he had dropped into his seat that he was able to state to himself the fact that the mere sight of her again had demolished all the barricades he had been building in his heart against her for the last six months. They had fallen more easily than the walls of Jericho at the blast of the sacred horn. The inflection of her voice, the look from her eyes, the gestures of her hands, had dispelled them into nothingness, like ramparts of mist. But it was not that alone! He was too much a man of affairs not to give credit to the practical abilities she had shown that night. No graces of person or charms of mind or resources of courage could have called forth his admiration more effectively than this display of prosaic executive capacity. What had to be done she had done more promptly, wisely, and easily than any man could have accomplished it. She had foreseen possibilities and forestalled accident with a thoroughness which he himself could not have equalled.

”My G.o.d!” he groaned, inwardly, ”what a wife she would have made for any man! How I could have loved her, if it hadn't been for--”

He stopped abruptly and leaped to his feet, looking around dazed on the great empty hail, at the end of which a porter slept in his chair, while the clerk blinked drowsily behind his desk.

”I do love her,” he declared to himself. ”All summer long I have uttered blasphemies. I do love her. Whatever she may have been, she shall be my wife.”

Out on the terrace the cold wind was grateful, and he stood for a minute bareheaded, letting it blow over his fevered face and through his hair.

It had risen during the last hour, making the pines rock slowly in the starlight and swelling their moan into deep sobs.

As Derek Pruyn paced the terrace in strained expectation he was deceived again and again into the thought that something was approaching. Now it was the champing and stamping of horses toiling up the ascent; now it was the bray and throb of the automobile; now it was the voices of men, conversing or calling or breaking into laughter. Twenty times he hastened to the steps at the end of the terrace, sure he could not have been mistaken, only to hear the earth-forces sob and sough and shout again, as if in derision of this puny, presumptuous mortal, with his evanescent joy and pain.

So another hour pa.s.sed. His mind was not of the imaginative order which invents disaster in moments of suspense, so that he was able to keep his watch more patiently than many another might have done. Once he tried to smoke; but the mere scent of tobacco seemed out of place in this curious world, alive with odd psychical suggestions, and he threw the cigar away into the darkness, where its light glowed reproachfully, like a dying eye, till it went out.

It was after three when a sudden sound from the driveway struck his ear; but he had been deceived so often that he would pay it no attention.

Though it seemed like the unmistakable approach of an automobile, it had seemed so before, and he would not even look round till he had reached the distant end of the terrace. When he turned he could see through the trees, and along the dark line of the avenue, the advance of the heralding light. Dorothea had come at last. She was even close upon them. In a few more seconds she would be alighting at the steps.

He hurried inside to wake the porter and warn Diane.

”She's here!” he called, rapping sharply at her door. ”Please come!

Quick!”

There was a response and a hurried movement from within, but he did not wait for her to appear. When she came out of her room she could see from the light thrown over the terrace that the motor had already stopped at the steps. Some one was getting out, and she could hear men's voices.

Advancing to a spot midway between her room and the main entry, she stood waiting for Derek to bring her his daughter. A moment later he sprang into the light of the doorway with features white and alarmed.

”Go back!” he cried to her, with a commanding gesture. ”Go back!”

”But what's the matter?”

”Go back!” he ordered, more imperiously than before.

”Oh, Derek, it's Dorothea! She's hurt. I must go to her. I will not go back.”