Part 49 (1/2)

He made an excuse about cigarettes, and chocolates for her, and left the box, hurrying to the little bar in the promenade, drinking there almost furiously, tasting nothing, waiting, a strange silent figure with a white face, until he felt the old glow re-commencing.

It came. The drugged mind answered to the call, and he went back to the box with light footsteps, full of riotous, evil thoughts.

Rita had withdrawn her chair into the box a little.

She looked up with a smile of welcome as he entered and sat down by her side. She began to eat the chocolates he had brought, and he watched her with greedy eyes.

Suddenly--maid of moods as she was--she pushed the satin-covered box away.

He felt a little white arm pushed through his.

”Gilbert, let's pretend we're married, just for this evening,” she said, looking at him with dancing eyes.

”What do you mean, Rita?” he said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

The girl half-smiled, flushed a little, and then patted the black sleeve of his coat.

”It's so nice to be together,” she whispered. ”I am so happy with you.

London is so wonderful with you to show it to me. I only wish it could go on always.”

He caught her wrist with his hot hand. ”It can, always, if you wish,”

he said.

She started at the fierce note in his voice. ”Hush,” she said. ”You mustn't talk like that.” Her face became severe and reproving. She turned it towards the stage.

The remainder of the evening alternated between wild fits of gaiety and rather moody silences. There was absolutely nothing of the crisp, delightful friends.h.i.+p of the drive to Brighton. A new relation was established between them, and yet it was not, as yet, capable of any definition at all.

She was baffling, utterly perplexing. At one moment he thought her his, really in love with him, prepared for all that might mean, at another she was a shy and rather dissatisfied school girl. The nervous strain within him, as the fires of his pa.s.sion burned and crackled, was intense. He fed the flame with alcohol whenever he had an opportunity.

All the old reverence and chivalry of that ideal friends.h.i.+p of which he had sung so sweetly vanished utterly.

A faint, but growing brutality of thought came to him as he considered her. Her innocence did not seem so insistent as before. He could not place her yet. All he knew was that she was certainly not the Rita of his dreams.

Yet with all this, his longing, his subjection to her every whim and mood, grew and grew each moment. He was absolutely pervaded by her.

Honour, prudence, his keen insight were all thrust away in the gathering storm of desire.

They had supper at a glittering palace in the Haymarket. In her simple girlish frock, without much adornment of any sort, she was the prettiest girl in the room. She enjoyed everything with wild avidity, and not the least of the exhilarations of the night was the knowledge--ripe and unmistakable now--of her complete power over him.

Gilbert ate nothing at the Carlton, but drank again. Distinguished still, an arresting personality in any room, his face had become deeply flushed and rather satyr-like as he watched Rita with longing, wonder, and an uneasy suspicion that only added fuel to the flame.

It was after midnight when he drove her home and they parted upon the steps of Queens Mansions.

He staggered a little in the fresh air as he stood there, though Rita in her excitement did not notice it. He had drunk enough during that day and night to have literally _killed_ two ordinary men.

”To-morrow!” he said, trying to put something that he knew was not there into his dull voice. ”To-morrow night.”

”To-morrow!” she replied. ”At the same time,” and evading his clumsy attempt at an embrace, she swirled into the hall of the flat with a last kiss of her hand.