Part 16 (1/2)

As he bent forward to receive the cup, their hands touched. The contact was electric. A rush of excited vitality seemed to pour into his body from hers. The touch was only for a second, but it left him startled and stark of pretenses. When he sought her eyes, they were calm as ever.

”You're a most bewildering woman--the most bewildering I ever met,” he confessed.

”Except my sister,” she corrected.

He glanced up at the portrait and back to her, comparing the features.

”Yes, I see it now. She is your sister. I ought to have guessed. But I haven't met her; so I don't except her.”

Maisie busied herself with pa.s.sing the dishes. She had a way of making everything appear conventional by the unruffled quiet with which she accepted it. At the back of her mind she seemed to be smiling at the domestic scene she had achieved with this man, who should have been her enemy.

”No, you haven't met her,” she a.s.sented. ”But until you've met her, you won't rest; and after you've met her, you won't rest either.--And so you think I'm bewildering! You thought something else, which you didn't have the courage to put into words. Bewildering and dangerous--the most dangerous woman you'd ever met--that was what you meant.”

He smiled with a shade of embarra.s.sment. ”I might have called you the most disconcerting woman; you're all of that. No man of sense, who valued his peace of mind, would tell any woman she was dangerous.”

”I don't see why. Why shouldn't he? Do tell me. I shan't be offended.”

She leant forward, absorbing him with her childish eyes, her lips parted with expectancy.

”Because----” Tabs checked himself while he studied the tantalizing innocence of her expression. He felt certain that he was going to say something irresistibly unwise. To gain time he looked away and commenced aimlessly stirring his cup. ”Well, if you must have it, because to tell a woman that would be to tempt her to be dangerous.”

”But I love to be tempted,” she said eagerly; ”temptation is the yeast of life.” And then in a whisper, speaking less to him than to herself, ”A woman knows that she's old when temptation ends.”

Like ripples from a stone flung into water the poignancy of what she had implied rather than uttered, spread away with a commotion which grew ever fainter. They sat without change of posture at either end of the couch, she bending towards him, he gazing down into his cup as though by staring into it he could retain his grip on the conventions. There was no sound, save the rustling of live coals in the grate. Outside the window the toy boat floated, a symbol of men's and women's ineffectual childishness, always dreaming of adventures on which they never set sail. Tabs pondered the hidden profundity of her words. At last he believed that through her he understood himself. It wasn't youth that he or anybody coveted; it was the more supreme boon of not growing old. He had just arrived at this new self-knowledge when she spoke.

”To be tempted means that one's wanted--wanted dreadfully, so that it hurts. That's living--to be wanted. Not to be wanted is worse than death. When you're dead, you're forgotten and you forget. To be forgotten and to remember is the end of all things. Not to be wanted when you're alive is to beat your flesh against the walls of a tomb.

Lord Taborley, I know what you came for.” He had set down his cup. She covered his bronzed hands with her own pa.s.sionate white ones, overwhelming him with a rush of words. ”You came to accuse me, to bribe me, to buy me. You didn't want to hear me; I was already condemned. Do you think I don't know what's said about my marriages? I know too well.

But it isn't vanity that makes me want to be loved. It's so right to be loved. It isn't wickedness. It's the terror of not being loved--the same terror that makes you cling to Terry though she doesn't want you in return---- We all want to believe that we're wanted. It's human. Without that life's a blank. One can't face up---- And I----”

She tore her hands from him and buried her face, sobbing in the cus.h.i.+ons.

V

He had done it. By some unaccountable blunder he had made her cry. What was it he had said? Only a minute ago she had been so radiant and smiling. His first thought was of Porter; she must not know. This crying must be stopped before she heard it. Any moment she might enter. Even now she might be listening at the door, preparing to enter.

Another conjecture rushed into his mind--this sobbing might be part of a prearranged plan. Tears are the jiu-jitsu of woman's art of self-defense. To the world at large the man is always a villain who has caused them. ”But I didn't cause them,” he protested to himself. And then, ”Dash it all! There's nothing gained by sitting here. I've got to do something.”

He roused himself and limped round the table to the end of the couch against which her face was hidden. He could see nothing but the pale gold of her hair, the ivory whiteness of her neck and the pitiful heaving of her fascinating shoulders. She looked extraordinarily like a doll--a broken doll which had been allowed to fall through some one's carelessness.

”Confound it! What a brute I am!” he muttered. ”What the d.i.c.kens does one do with a woman in hysterics?”

He laid his hand very timidly on her silky hair. He had had no idea that it was so silky. ”Cheer up!” he said softly. And then again, ”I do wish you'd cheer up.”

She took not the slightest notice, save that a small white hand scuttled out like a mouse from beneath the cus.h.i.+ons and commenced a hurried search. He watched it and formed a hasty guess. It couldn't find the thing for which it had been sent, so he dropped his own large handkerchief in its path, saw it take possession of it and dive again beneath the cus.h.i.+ons. It made no difference to the sobbing.

What ought he to do? He couldn't endure the sound--it wrenched him. He bent over her, trying to turn her obstinately hidden face in his direction.

”Maisie!” The word had slipped out. It didn't matter. It mattered so little that he repeated the indiscretion. ”Maisie, you mustn't break your heart like that. No one thinks ill of you and you are wanted.

You're wanted most awfully. Heaps of people want you.”

The shoulders ceased to heave for a fraction of a second, but her face still refused to turn. ”Who-oo--who wants me?” Her voice reached him choked with tears and m.u.f.fled.