The Beauty Part 23

"Why, Dita," breaking off sharply and starting to his feet, "what is the matter? Are you ill?"

Indeed he was justified in thinking so. She had grown white as snow. The color had left even her lips.

"No," she spoke with an effort, but she lifted her head, as if by main strength of will. "No," and he was infinitely relieved to see a bit of color creep back into her lips, but the eyes she courageously raised to his were dark with an emotion which he could only translate as fear or horror, he could not tell which.

"Have I offended you, then?" he murmured. "Believe me--"

"No, no," she insisted so definitely that he was forced to believe her.

"It was something quite different. Something, something I just remembered."

She was manifestly so confused and disturbed that he did not press the point. It would have seemed both unkind and unwise to do so, and then, although her eyes still retained that curiously shocked, almost horror-stricken expression, the color had returned to her cheek.

"You were saying?" she began, her voice steady enough now. "Oh, yes, I remember, about the money." Those deep vibrations of emotion thrilled her tones. "Well, I won't have it. Won't touch it. I will not hear of settlements. I can make enough for my needs."

He lifted his eyes and looked at her quickly and then the eyelids almost closed. Perdita was under very close observation.

"Naturally, I do not for a moment dispute that. It is a fact already proven, but it is my wish to remove the necessity from you. Your occupation will then continue to be a source of amus.e.m.e.nt, of interest to you, but you will not feel that it is your sole dependence."

She shook her head with a sort of irrevocable gentleness with which he could not fail to be struck.

"No," she said, "it is really quite useless to discuss the matter.

Truly, Cresswell, I will not even consider it."

"But, Dita," he began, then paused a moment as if to make a choice of arguments, desirous of using at once the most potent and evidently preparing to undermine and break down the barriers of her decision if it took a month.

She forestalled him, however, with a quick flank movement. She rose to her feet. "Cresswell," she said, "I promised you last night that I would discuss this matter with you this morning, but now," there was the least hesitation in her voice, "I am going to ask a favor. I dined with you last night, now will you dine with me to-night? Will you? There will only be Miss Fleming and her father, and she will just sit at the table a few minutes, she never dines before playing; Wallace Martin and Maud, and they are going somewhere, so you and I will have the leisure of a long evening to discuss all the pros and cons of this question, your side and mine. Will you come?"

She was looking at him so earnestly, there was something so strange in the depths of her dark eyes, that he felt tempted on the moment to beg an explanation of this postponement. Then, as quickly he relinquished it.

"I shall be delighted to come," he said heartily. "And if to-night you are in no mood to talk over dry details, we will put it off again until a more convenient season."

"No." Her tone was positive. "I am quite sure that we will come to one decision or another this evening. Good-by."

When the curtain at the door had fallen behind him, Dita sat down again.

She did not seem to be thinking or mentally engaged in any way whatever.

On the contrary, she seemed to be waiting, two or three minutes pa.s.sed, five. Still she waited. Ah, a bitter smile hovered for one moment around her lips. Her whole tense figure relaxed a little as if the moment which she had so confidently expected had come.

There was the sound of the shutting of the outer door in the small room to the left, then a halting step across the bare and polished floor.

Eugene's step. He paused a moment in the doorway leading into the larger room, but as Dita did not turn nor give any sign whatever of having heard him, he came on.

"Back again, you see," he said. "I saw Hepworth leaving the house just as I came about the corner up here, so I knew the coast was clear. May I sit down?"

For the first time Dita looked at him. He was unmistakably not of the same temper in which he had left her an hour before. The buoyancy and spring of him had vanished. His eyes were clouded, his mouth depressed, certain lines on his brow and about his mouth stood out more markedly than usual. In fact, he seemed to have halted midway in some mood between dismay and anger. And as Dita observed this, there again played about her mouth for one instant that same, sad, bitter, secretive smile.

She had leaned back in her chair as if prepared to remain some time, but she made no effort whatever to carry on a conversation or even to embark on one.

The frown deepened on Eugene's brow. This att.i.tude on her part was evidently irritating to him.

"Everything settled, Dita, and satisfactorily?"

"What do you mean by satisfactorily?" she asked, letting a moment or two lapse between his question and her answer.

"I mean everything arranged in your favor," he replied with a short laugh. "He is rather sure to do that, you know. He likes to do things with the grand air."

"Oh, no, Eugene, it is you who like to affect the grand air. With him it is natural."

He looked up at her quickly. "It sounds, it sounds," he said, "as if you might possibly be on the verge of a sirocco. Don't Dita, I implore you.

I am off the key myself."

"Why?" she asked.

He lifted his shoulders. "Ah, that I do not know."

"I refused any alimony, Eugene," she said abruptly.

"What! Oh, Dita, you must not! Why, it is the height of folly! My dear child, it is quixotic to the verge of idiocy." All his moodiness had vanished. He was arguing her case fervently enough now. "You have had your head turned by the success you and Maud have enjoyed in this venture this winter, but that is purely ephemeral. You were a fad, a novelty. How long do such things last in New York? And here is Hepworth willing and anxious to endow you with houses and lands. Dita," and never had she heard him plead his love with such fervor, "Dita, you must not ruin your whole life by a blind whim. You must listen to advice. You must be guided by your friends in this matter.

"It is true, of course," he continued, "that I make a very large income, but I lay nothing by. It is impossible. I must keep up an appearance--the painter prince, and all that sort of thing. It is expected of me. It is a part of my stock in trade."

"Then you consider, 'Gene," her voice was calmly, rea.s.suringly reasonable now, "you consider that fully to enjoy life we must both possess more than an ordinarily large income?"

"Dearest Dita," he bent forward with his tenderest, most ingratiating smile, "do not for one moment mistake me. I think, I know we could be happy without a centime between us, but viewing life as it is lived and considering your tastes and my tastes, the mode of existence to which we have accustomed ourselves and all that, I think we, like most other people, would do well to avoid the perilous experiment of comparative poverty. Whether we wish to believe it or not, really to invest life with romance and interest and charm requires more than mere imagination, of which you and I possess an abundant store, Dita. It also requires money."

"It would require a great deal more than that for me, Eugene," she rose to her feet now and stood looking at him as if from mountain heights, so remote and distant she seemed. "Remember the old legend of my amulet,"--she lifted it and swung it to and fro as she talked,--"that sooner or later it would force the one who possessed it to reveal himself in his true character? Well, it has proved its ancient claim.

You apparently possessed it long enough for it to force you to reveal your true self; or perhaps that was inevitable under any circ.u.mstances."

"What do you mean, Dita?" he, too, had sprung to his feet, and stood facing her, both fear and chagrin in his eyes.

"This," she flung out her hand with the amulet in it; "while I sat here talking to Cresswell, I was turning this square bit of crystal this way and that, watching it catch the light. Suddenly, as I held it between my thumb and forefinger, I saw you, it reflected you quite clearly. You thrust your head a little forward from the door, down there," indicating by a gesture the door at the lower end of the room, "anxious to hear the better what Cresswell was saying and quite sure from the position of our chairs that we could not see you. Then I sent him away and waited. I knew, I knew instinctively, that you would do just as you did, Eugene, and--so I waited. I knew that I should hear that outer door close, that I should hear you walk across the floor, I knew it."

The moments pulsed like heartbeats between them.

"I shall not deny it," he said at last, "but Dita, Dita, I did it for you. I felt that you would follow some quixotic course, which you would regret for a lifetime. I know so well your mad, impulsive recklessness.

Oh, Dita," he stretched out his arms to her.

There was no responsive movement on her part. She stood mute, immovable, eyes downcast, as if she could not bear to look upon his humiliation.

The long chain had slipped through her fingers, and the amulet swung at the end of it, to and fro between herself and him, like the pendulum of an inflexible fate.

"Dita," his voice was irresistibly appealing, "you will not thrust me thus out of your heart, oh, not for this!"

"You never had a place in my heart, Eugene, I know that now."

She swept across the floor, but as she put up her hand to pull aside the curtain before the door, she paused. "I--I'm sorry, Eugene," she faltered and by an effort of will lifted her eyes to him at last.

But they fell neither on the shamed nor the conquered. His head was thrown back, his eyes met hers. He was smiling, and his smile held unfathomable things. It spoke of a spirit eternally young and yet which had felt the weary weight of all dead and crumbling centuries. It was sad, disillusioned, yet eagerly joyous. It had tasted all things and found them vanity, yet pursued an unending quest with infinite zest.

"Dear Dita," he murmured, "never doubt that I loved you, love you still, but as the artist loves, not the plodder. You or any woman can only be to him the 'shadow of the idol of his thought,' the mere symbol of beauty, but what he really loves, Dita, is beauty's self."