Athalie Part 50

"You never did care to dance, did you?"

"No--" he shrugged, "I used to mess about some."

"And what do you do to amuse yourself in these days?"

"Nothing--much."

"You must do _something_, Clive!"

"Oh, yes ... I travel,--go about."

"Is that all?"

"That's about all."

She had stepped aside to let the dancers pa.s.s; he moved with her.

She said in a low, even voice: "Is it pleasant to be back, Clive?"

He nodded in silence.

"Nothing has changed very much since you went away. There's a new administration at the City Hall, a number of new sky-sc.r.a.pers in town; people danced the Tango day before yesterday, the Maxixe yesterday, the Miraflores to-day, the Orchid to-morrow. That's about all, Clive."

And as he merely acquiesced in silence, she glanced up sideways at him, and remained watching this new, sun-browned, lean-visaged version of the boy she had first known and the boyish man who had gone out of her life four years before.

"Would you like to see Hafiz?" she asked.

He turned quickly toward her: "Yes," he said, the ghost of a smile lining the corners of his eyes.

"He's on my bed, asleep. Will you come?"

Slipping along the edges of the dancing floor and stepping daintily over the rolled rugs, she led the way through the pa.s.sage to her rose and ivory bedroom, Clive following.

Hafiz opened his eyes and looked across at them from the pillow, stood up, his back rounding into a furry arch; yawned, stretched first one hind leg and then the other, and finally stood, flexing his forepaws and uttering soft little mews of recognition and greeting.

"I wonder," she said, smilingly, "if you have any idea how much Hafiz has meant to me?"

He made no reply; but his face grew sombre and he laid a lean, muscular hand on the cat's head.

Neither spoke again for a little while. Finally his hand fell from the appreciative head of Hafiz, dropping inert by his side, and he stood looking at the floor. Then there was the slightest touch on his arm, and he turned to go; but she did not move; and they confronted each other, alone, and after many years.

Suddenly she stretched out both hands, looking him full in the eyes, her own brilliant with tears:

"I've got you back--haven't I?" she said unsteadily. But he could not speak, and stood savagely controlling his quivering lip with his teeth.

"I just want you as I had you, Clive--my first boy friend--who turned aside from the bright highway of life to speak to a ragged child.... I have had the boy; I have had the youth; I want the man, Clive,--honestly, in perfect innocence.

"Would you care what might be said of us--as long as we know our friendship is blameless? I am not taking you from _her_, am I? I am not taking anything away from her, am I?

"I have not always played squarely with men. I don't think it is possible. They have hoped for--various eventualities. I have not encouraged them; I have merely let them hope. Which is not square.

"But I wish always to play square with women. Unless a woman does, n.o.body will.... And that is why I ask you, Clive--am I robbing her--if you come back to me--as you were?--nothing more--nothing less, Clive, but just exactly as you were."

It was impossible for him to control his voice or his words or even his thoughts just yet; he stood with his lean head turned partly from her, motionless as a rock, in the desperate grip of self-mastery, crushing the slender hands that alternately yielded and clasped his own.

"Oh, Clive," she said, "Clive! You don't know--you never can know what loneliness means to such a woman as I am.... I thought once--many times--that I could never again speak to you--that I never again could care to hear about you.... But I was wrong, pitifully wrong.

"It was not jealousy of her, Clive; you know that, don't you? There had never been any question of such sentiment between you and me--excepting once--one night--that last night when you said good-bye--and you were very much overwrought.

"So it was not jealousy.... It was loneliness. I wanted you, even if you had fallen in love. That sort of love had nothing to do with us!

"There was nothing in it that ought to have come between you and me?... Besides, if such an ephemeral thought ever drifted through my idle mind, I knew on reflection that you and I could never be destined to marry, even if such sentiment ever inclined us. I knew it and accepted it without troubling to a.n.a.lyse the reasons. I had no desire to invade your world--less desire now that I have penetrated it professionally and know a little about it.

"It was not jealousy, Clive."

He swung around, bent swiftly and pressed his lips to her hands. And she abandoned them to him with all her heart and soul in an overwhelming pa.s.sion of purest emotion.

"I couldn't stand it, Clive," she said, "when I heard you were at your hotel alone.... And all the unhappiness I had heard of--your married life--I--I couldn't stand it; I couldn't let you remain there all alone!

"And when you came here to-night, and I saw in your face how these four years had altered you--how it had been with you--I wanted you back--to let you know I am sorry--to let you know I care for the man who has known unhappiness, as I cared for the boy who had known only happiness.

"Do you understand, Clive? Do you, dear? Don't you see what I see?--a man standing all alone by a closed door behind which his hopes lie dead.

"Clive, that is where you came to me, offering sympathy and friendship. That is where I come to you in my turn, offering whatever you care to take of me--if there is in me anything that may comfort you."

He bent and laid his lips to her hands again, remaining so, curbed before her; and she looked down at his lean and powerful head and shoulders, and saw the hint of grey edging the crisp, dark hair, and the dark stain of tropic suns, that never could be effaced.

So far no pa.s.sion, other than innocent, had she ever known for any man,--nothing of lesser emotion, nothing physical. And, had she thought of it at all she must have believed that it was that way with her still. For no thought concerning it disturbed her tender, tremulous happiness with this man beside her who still held her hands imprisoned against his breast.

And presently they were seated on the couch at the foot of her bed, excited, garrulous, exchanging gossip, confidences, ideas long unuttered, desires long unexpressed.

Under the sweeping flashlight of her intelligence the four years of his absence were illuminated, and pa.s.sed swiftly in review for his inspection. Of loneliness, perplexity, grief, deprivation, she made light, laughingly, shrugging her smooth young shoulders.

"All that was yesterday," she said. "There is only to-day, now--until to-morrow becomes to-day. You won't go away, will you, Clive?"

"No."

"There is no need of your going, is there?--no reason for you to go--no duty--moral obligation--is there, Clive?"

"None."

"You wouldn't say so just because I wish you to, would you?"

"I wouldn't be here at all if there were any reason for me to be--there."

"Then I am not robbing her of you?--I am not depriving her of the tiniest atom of anything that you owe to her? Am I, Clive?"

"I can't see how. There is only one thing I can do for--my wife. And that is to keep away from her."