Quick Action Part 50

"No--_what_?" he persisted.

And after a moment her pallor was tinted with a delicate rose.

"No--_what_?" he insisted again.

"No--Jim," she answered under breath.

"Then--close your ears, Jean, dear."

She closed them; his arm encircled her waist. She bore it n.o.bly.

"You may fire when you are ready--James!" she said faintly.

A thunder-clap answered her; the Causeway seemed to spring up under their feet; the world reeled.

Presently she heard his voice sounding calmly: "Are you all right, Jean?"

"Yes.... I was thinking of you--as long as I could think at all. I was ready to go--anywhere--with you."

"I have been ready for that," he said unsteadily, "from the moment I heard your voice. But it is--is wonderful of _you_!"

She opened her blue eyes, dreamily looking up into his. Then the colour surged into her face.

"If--if you had spoken to me across the aisle," she said, "it would have begun even sooner, I think.... Because I can't imagine myself not--caring for you."

He took her into his arms:

"Don't worry," he said, "I'll make a place for you in the world, even if that Maltese cross means nothing."

She looked into his eyes fearlessly: "I know you will," she said.

Then he kissed her and she put both arms around his neck and offered her fresh, young lips again.

x.x.xI

Toward sunset he came to, partially, pa.s.sed his hand across his enchanted eyes, and rose from the hammock beside her.

"Dearest," he said, "that swamp ought to be partly drained by this time.

Suppose we walk over before dinner and take a look?"

Still confused by the sweetness of her dream, she sat up, and he drew her to her feet, where she stood twisting up her beautiful hair, half smiling, shy, adorable.

Then together they walked slowly out along the Causeway, so absorbed in each other that already they had forgotten the explosion, and even the Maltese cross itself.

It was only when they were halted by the great gap in the Causeway that Jean Sandys glanced to the left, over a vast bed of s.h.i.+ning mud, where before blue wavelets had lapped the base of the Causeway.

Then her vaguely smiling eyes flew wide open; she caught her lover's arm in an excited clasp.

"O Jim!" she exclaimed. "Look! Look! It is true! It is true! _Look_ at the bed of the lake!"

They stood trembling and staring at the low, squat, windowless coquina house, reeking with the silt of centuries, crawling with stranded water creatures.

The stones that had blocked the door had fallen before the shock of the dynamite.

"Good G.o.d!" he whispered. "_Do you see what is inside?_"

But Jean Sandys, calmly looking untold wealth in its glittering face, sighed, smiled, and turned her blue gaze on her lover, finding in his eyes the only miracle that now had power to hold her undivided attention.

For it is that way with some girls.

But the novelist, unable to endure a dose of his own technique, could no longer control his impatience:

"What in G.o.d's name was there in that stone house!" he burst out.

"Oh, Lord!" muttered Stafford, "it is two hours after midnight."

He rose, bent over the girl's hand, and kissed the emerald on the third finger.

Figure after figure, tall, shadowy, leisurely followed his example, while her little hand lay listlessly on the silken cus.h.i.+ons and her dreaming eyes seemed to see n.o.body.

Duane and I remained for a while seated, then in silence,--which Athalie finally broke for us:

"Patience," she said, "is the art of hoping.... Good-night."

I rose; she looked up at me, lifted her slim arm and placed the palm of her hand against my lips.

And so I took my leave; thinking.