The Hollow of Her Hand Part 35

"Put yourself in my place," was all that Sara said in reply, and her companion had no means of translating the sentence.

She could only remain mute and wondering, her eyes fixed on that other mystery: the cameo face in the moon that hung high above the sombre forest.

"If it were not for the trip to Lenox," she murmured plaintively.

"The trip is off," announced Sara. She too was staring at the cloudless sky. "There will be rain tomorrow."

"It is very clear to-night, Sara."

"Do you hear that little wail in the trees--as if a child were whimpering out there? That is the plaint of the fairies who live in the buds and twigs, in the flower cups and mosses. They famish, their G.o.ds will hear. Their G.o.ds hear when ours is deaf. You will see. There will be clouds over us to-morrow and we will breathe the mist."

The girl s.h.i.+vered.

Many minutes afterward she said, as one who marvels: "I hear the promise in the wind, Sara,--the new, cool wind."

"The G.o.ds are whispering. Soon the fairies and elves will come forth to revel. Ah, what a wonderful thing the night is!"

"The fairies," mused the girl. "You believe in them?"

"Resolutely."

"And I too."

"We will never grow old, my dear," said Sara. "That is what the fairies are for: to keep those who love them young."

Hetty had relaxed. Her soft young body was warm again; that ineffably feminine charm was revived in her.

"Poor Leslie," murmured Sara, a long time afterward, a dreamy note in her voice. "I can't put him out of my thoughts. He will never get over it. I have never seen one so stricken and yet so brave.

He would have been more than a husband to you, Hetty. It is in him to be a slave to the woman he loves. I know him well, poor boy."

Hetty was silent, brooding. Sara resumed her thoughtful observations.

"Why should you let what happened months ago stand in the way of--"

She got no farther than that. With an exclamation of horror, the girl sprang away from her and glowered at her with dilated eyes.

"My G.o.d, Sara!" she whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "Are you mad?"

The other sighed. "I suppose you must think it of me," she said dismally. "We are made differently, you and I. If I cared for a man, nothing in all this world could stand between me and him. My love would fortify me against the enemy we are p.r.o.ne to call conscience.

It would justify me in slaying the thing we call conscience. In your heart, Hetty, you have not wronged Leslie Wrandall by any act of yours. You owe him no reparation. On the contrary, it is not far out of the way to say that he owes you something, but of course it is a claim for recompense and resolves itself into a sentimental debt, so there's really no use discussing it."

Hetty was still staring. "You don't mean to say you would have me marry Challis Wrandall's brother?" she said, in a sort of stupefaction.

Sara shook her head. "I mean this: you would be justified in permitting Leslie to glorify that which his brother desecrated; your womanhood, my dear."

"My G.o.d, Sara!" again fell in a hoa.r.s.e whisper from the girl's lips.

"I simply voice my point of view," explained Sara calmly. "As I said before, we look at things differently."

"I can't believe you mean what you have said," cried Hetty.

"Why--why, if I loved him with all my heart, soul and body I could not even think of--Oh, I shudder to think of it!"

"I love you," continued Sara, fixing her mysterious eyes on those of the girl, "and yet you took from me something more than a brother.

I love you, knowing everything, and I am paying in full the debt he owes to you. Leslie, knowing nothing, is no less your debtor.

All this is paradoxical, I know, my dear, but we must remember that while other people may be indebted to us, we also owe something to ourselves. We ought to take pay from ourselves. Please do not conclude that I am urging or even advising you to look with favour upon Leslie Wrandall's honourable, sincere proposal of marriage. I am merely trying to convince you that you are ent.i.tled to all that any man can give you in this world of ours,--we women all are, for that matter."

"I was sure that you couldn't ask me to marry him. I couldn't believe--"

"Forget what I have said, dearest, if it grieves you," cried Sara warmly. She arose and drew the girl close to her. "Kiss me, Hetty."

Their lips met. The girl's eyes were closed, but Sara's were wide open and gleaming. "It is because I love you," she said softly, but she did not complete the sentence that burned in her brain.

To herself she repeated: "It is because I love you that I would scourge you with Wrandalls!"

"You are very good to me, Sara," sobbed Hetty.

"You WILL be nice to Leslie?"

"Yes, yes! If he will only let me be his friend."

"He asks no more than that. Now, you must go to bed."

Suddenly, without warning, she held the girl tightly in her arms.

Her breathing was quick, as of one moved by some sharp sensation of terror. When Hetty, in no little wonder, opened her eyes Sara's face was turned away, and she was looking over her shoulder as if cause for alarm had come from behind.

"What is it?" cried Hetty anxiously.

She saw the look of dread in her companion's eyes, even as it began to fade.

"I don't know," muttered Sara. "Something, I can't tell what, came over me. I thought some one was stealing up behind me. How silly of me."

"Ah," said Hetty, with an odd smile, "I can understand how you felt."

"Hetty, will you take me in with you to-night?" whispered Sara nervously. "Let me sleep with you. I can't explain it, but I am afraid to be alone to-night." The girl's answer was a glad smile of acquiescence. "Come with me, then, to my bedroom while I change.

I have the queerest feeling that some one is in my room. I don't want to be alone. Are you afraid?"

Hetty held back, her face blanching.

"No, I am not afraid," she cried at once, and started toward the door.

"There IS some one in this room," said Sara a few moments later, when they were in the big bedroom down the hall.

"I--I wonder," murmured Hetty.

And yet neither of them looked about in search for the intruder!

Far into the night Sara sat in the window of Hetty's dressing-room, her chin sunk low in her hands, staring moodily into the now opaque night, her eyes sombre and unblinking, her body as motionless as death itself. The cooling wind caressed her and whispered warnings into her unheeding ears, but she sat there unprotected against its chill, her night-dress damp with the mist that crept up with sinister stealth from the sea.

In the flats below, a vast army of frogs shrilled in ceaseless chatter; night birds and insects responded to the bedlam challenge; the hoa.r.s.e monotonous grunts of a fog-horn came up from the Sound.

There were people out there, asleep in pa.s.sage.