The Coast of Chance Part 23

He gave her a look. "That's beautiful of you, but"--and he turned to the window again and spoke to himself--"it puts an awful face on my business. All along you've made me think for you, and of you, more than you deserve, more than I can afford." The stare she gave this forced out of him a reluctant smile. "Why, didn't you know it? Do you think I couldn't have had the sapphire that first night I saw it on your hand, if it hadn't been--well, for the way I thought of you? I fancied you knew that then." He made a restless movement. His arm fell from her shoulder. "There's been only one thing to do from the first," he said, "and I don't see my way to it."

"Oh, don't take it! Leave it!" she pleaded. "Leave it with me! What does it matter so much? A jewel! If only you would leave it and go away from me!"

He whirled on her. "In Heaven's name, a fine piece of logic! Leave the sapphire to people who can make no better use of it than I? Leave you to go on with this business and marry this Cressy? Even suppose you gave me the sapphire, I couldn't let you do that!"

"If I gave you the sapphire," Flora said, "oh, he wouldn't marry me then!" She couldn't tell how this had come to her, but all at once it was clear, like a sign of her complete failure; but Kerr only wondered at her distress.

"Well, if you don't want to marry him, what do you care?"

"Oh, I don't, I don't care for that." She sank back listlessly in her chair again. She couldn't explain, but in her own mind she knew that if she lost the sapphire she would so lose in her own esteem; so fail at every point that counted, that she would never be able to see or be seen in the world again as the same creature. Even to Kerr--even to him to whom she would have yielded she would have become a different thing. She realized now she had staked everything on the premise that she wouldn't have to yield; and now it began to appear to her that she would. His weakness was appearing now as a terrible strength, a strength that seemed on the point of crus.h.i.+ng her, but it could never convince her.

That strength of his had brought her here. Was it to happen here, that strange thing she had foreseen, the end of her? Was it here she was to lose the sapphire, and him?

She looked vaguely around the room, at the most impa.s.sive aspect of the place, as at a place she never expected to leave; the darkening windows, the fast-shut door, the child leaning on the desk, watching them with sharp, incurious eyes--this would be her niche for ever. She would be left for ever with the crusts and the dregs. And Kerr's figure in the twilight seemed each time it moved to be on the point of vanis.h.i.+ng into the grayness. He moved continually up and down the narrow s.p.a.ces between the tables. He troubled the dry repose of the place.

Sometimes he looked at her, studying, questioning, undecided. Once he stopped, as if just there an idea had arrested him. He looked at her, as if, she thought, he were afraid of her. Then for long moments he stood looking blankly, steadily out of the window. He did not approach her. He seemed to avoid her, until, as though he had come at last to his decision, he walked straight up to her and stood above her. She rose to meet him. He was smiling.

"Don't you know that you could easily get rid of me?" he demanded.

"Cressy would be too glad to do it for you; and there are more ways than one that I could get the sapphire from you, if I could face the idea of it--but really, really we care too much for each other. There's only one way out for you and me and the sapphire. I'll take you both."

Her clenched hands opened and fell at her sides. A great wave of helplessness flowed over her. Her eyes, her throat filled up with a rush of blinding tears. She put out her hands, trying to thrust him off, but he took the wrists and held them apart, and held her a moment helpless before him.

"Oh, no," she whispered.

"But I love you."

Her head fell back. She looked at him as if he had spoken the incredible.

"I love you," he repeated, "though G.o.d knows how it has happened!"

The blood rushed to her heart.

He was drawing her nearer.

She felt his breath upon her face; she saw the image of herself in his eyes. She started to herself on the edge of danger, and made a struggle to release her wrists. He let them go. She sank down into her chair.

"Why not? Why won't you go with me?" she heard him say again, still close beside her.

"I can't, I can't!" She clung to the words, but for the moment she had forgotten her reasons. She had forgotten everything but the wonderful fact that he loved her. He was there within reach, and she had only to stretch out her hand, only to say one word, and he would cut through the ranks of her perplexities and terrors, and carry her away.

"Why not, if you love me?" he insisted. "Are you afraid of those people?

Are you afraid of Cressy? He shall never come near you."

She shook her head. "No, it isn't that."

He stooped and looked into her face. "Then what keeps you?"

She looked up slowly.

"My honor."

"Your honor!" For a moment her answer seemed to have him by surprise. He mused, and again it came dreamily back to her that he was looking at her across a vast difference no will of hers could ever bridge.

"Don't you see what I am?" she murmured. "Can't you imagine where I stand in this hideous business? It's my trust. I'm on their side; and, oh, in spite of everything, I can't make myself believe in giving it to you!"

He pondered this very gravely.

"Yes, I can see how you might feel that way. But is the feeling really yours? Are you sure they haven't put it on you? Might not my honor do as well for you, if you were mine?" It struck her she had never connected him with honor, and he read her thought with a flash of humor.

"Evidently it hasn't occurred to you that I have an honor."

She looked at him sadly. "In spite of everything I'm on the other side.

I belong to them."

"You belong to me." His hand closed on hers. "Mine is the only honor you have to think of. Can't you trust that I am right? Can't you see it through my eyes? Can't you make yourself all mine?" His arm was around her now, holding her fast, but she turned her face away, and his kisses fell only on her cheek and hair.

"Oh," she cried, "if only I could!"

"Don't you love me?"

"Oh, yes, but that makes me see, all the more, the dreadful difference between us."

"You silly child, there is no difference, really."

"Ah, yes, you know it as well as I. You were afraid of it, too. All that long time you were walking around you were wondering whether you dared to take me."

He denied her steadily, "Never!"

She loved him for that gallant denial, for she knew he had been afraid, horribly afraid, more afraid than she was now; but that strange quality of his that gave to a double risk a double zest had set him all the hotter on this resolution.

He sat for some long moments thoughtfully looking straight before him.

She, glancing at his profile, white and faintly glimmering in the twilight, thought it looked sharp, absorbed and set. She could see his great determination growing there in the gloom between them, looming and overshadowing them both.

"I see," he said at last. "I'll simply have to take you in spite of it."

He turned around to her, and reached his hands down through the dusk.

She was being drawn up into arms which she could not see. Her hands were clasped around a neck, her cheek was against a face which she had never hoped to touch. Her reason and her fears were stifled and caught away from her lips with her breath. She was giving up to her awful weakness.

She was giving up to the power of love. She was letting herself sink into it as she would sink into deep water. The sense of drowning in this profound, unfathomable element, of shutting her eyes and opening her arms to it, was the highest she had ever touched; but all at once the memory of what she was leaving behind her, like a last glimpse of sky, swept her with fear. She made a desperate effort to rescue herself before the waters quite closed over her head.

She pulled herself free. Without his arms around her for the first moment she could hardly stand. She took an uncertain step forward; then with a rush she reached the white curtains. They flapped behind her. She heard Kerr laugh, a note, quiet, caressing, almost content. It came from the gloom like a disembodied voice of triumph. Her rush had carried her into the middle of the anteroom. At this last moment was there to be no miracle to save her? There was no rescue among these dumb walls and closed-up windows. The purple child gave her a sharp, bird-like glance, as if the most that this wild woman could want was "change." Flora looked behind her and saw Kerr, who had put aside the curtains and was standing looking at her. He was bright and triumphant in that twilight room. He was not afraid of losing her now. He knew in that one moment he had imprisoned her for ever! She saw him approaching, but though all her mind and spirit strained for flight, something had happened to her will.

It tottered like her knees.

He stooped and picked up an artificial rose, which had fallen from her hat, and put it into her hand. A moment, with his head bent, he stood looking into her face, but without touching her.

"Sit down over there," he said, and pointed toward a chair against the wall. She went meekly like a prisoner. He spoke to the child in the purple ap.r.o.n, who was still sitting behind the desk. He put some money on the cash-desk in front of her. It was gold. It shone gorgeously in the dull surrounding, and the child pounced upon it, incredulous of her luck. Then he turned, crossed the room, soundlessly opened the door, and went out into the violet dark of the street.

The child furtively tested her coin, biting it as if to taste the glitter, and Flora waited, lost, given up by herself, pa.s.sively watching for the room to be filled again with his presence. He was back after a long minute, and this time took up his stand at the door, where, pus.h.i.+ng aside the tight-drawn curtain a little, from time to time he looked out into the street. Sometimes his eyes followed the cracks of the plastered wall, sometimes he studied the floor at his feet; every moment she saw he was alert, expectantly watching and waiting; and though he never looked at her sitting behind him, she felt his protection between her and the darkening street. She sat in the shadow of it, feeling it all around her, claiming her as it would claim her henceforth, from, the world. A ghost of light glimmered along the curtains of the window, and stopped, quivering, in the middle of the curtained door. Then he turned about and beckoned her. Sheer weakness kept her sitting. He went to her, took her face between his hands, and looked into it long and intently.

"You don't want to go!" The words fell from his lips like an accusal.

His sudden realization of what she felt held him there dumb with disappointment. "You have won me," her look was saying, "and yet I have immediately become a worthless thing, because I am going; and I don't believe in going." She felt she had failed him--how cruelly, was written in his face. But it was only for a moment that she made him hesitate.

The next he shook himself free.