Part 37 (1/2)
Athalie slowly shook her head: ”There is no death.”
He nodded almost gratefully: ”I know what you mean. I dare say you are right.... Well--I think I'll go back to Yhdunez.”
”Not this evening?” she protested, smilingly.
He smiled, too: ”No, not this evening, Miss Greensleeve. I shall never care to go anywhere again--”... His face altered.... ”Unless you care to go--with me.”
What he had said she would have taken gaily, lightly, had not the gravity of his face forbidden it. She saw the lean muscles tighten along his clean-cut cheek, saw the keen eyes grow wistful, then steady themselves for her answer.
She could not misunderstand him; she disdained to, honouring the simplicity and truth of this man to whom she was so truly devoted.
Her abandoned sewing lay on her lap. Hafiz slept with one velvet paw entangled in her thread. She looked down, absently freeing thread and fabric, and remained so for a moment, thinking. After a while she looked up, a trifle pale:
”Thank you, Captain Dane,” she said in a low voice.
He waited.
”I--am afraid that I am--in love--already--with another man.”
He bent his head, quietly; there was no pleading, no asking for a chance, no whining of any species to which the monarch man is so const.i.tutionally predisposed when soft, young lips p.r.o.nounce the death warrant of his sentimental hopes.
All he said was: ”It need not alter anything between us--what I have asked of you.”
”It only makes me care the more for our friends.h.i.+p, Captain Dane.”
He nodded, studying the pattern in the s.h.i.+rvan rug under his feet. A procession of symbols representing scorpions and tarantulas embellished one of the rug's many border stripes. His grave eyes followed the procession entirely around the five-by-three bit of weaving. Then he rose, bent over her, took her slim hand in silence, saluted it, and asking if he might call again very soon, went out about his business, whatever it was. Probably the most important business he had on hand just then was to get over his love for Athalie Greensleeve.
For a long while Athalie sat there beside Hafiz considering the world and what it was threatening to do to her; considering man and what he had offered and what he had not offered to do to her.
Distressed because of the pain she had inflicted on Captain Dane, yet proud of the honour done her, she sat thinking, sometimes of Clive, sometimes of Mr. Wahlbaum, sometimes of Doris and Catharine, and of her brother who had gone out to the coast years ago, and from whom she had never heard.
But mostly she thought of Clive--and of his long silence.
Presently Hafiz woke up, stretched his fluffy, snowy limbs, yawned, pink-mouthed, then looked up out of gem-clear eyes, blinking inquiringly at his young mistress.
”Hafiz,” she said, ”if I don't find employment very soon, what is to become of you?”
The evening paper, as yet unread, lay on the sofa beside her. She picked it up, listlessly, glancing at the headings of the front page columns. There seemed to be trouble in Mexico; trouble in j.a.pan; trouble in Hayti. Another column recorded last night's heat and gave the list of deaths and prostrations in the city. Another column--the last on the front page--announced by cable the news of a fas.h.i.+onable engagement--a Miss Winifred Stuart to a Mr. Clive Bailey; both at present in Paris--
She read it again, slowly; and even yet it meant nothing to her, conveyed nothing she seemed able to comprehend.
But halfway down the column her eyes blurred, the paper slipped from her hands to the floor, and she dropped back into the hollow of the sofa, and lay there, unstirring. And Hafiz, momentarily disturbed, curled up on her lap again and went peacefully to sleep.
CHAPTER XV