Madcap Part 10

The Countess Olga examined him through her long lashes.

"Are you alone here?"

"Yes. I'm camping."

"Ugh," she shuddered. "You had better come to 'Wake-Robin'."

"No."

She stamped her small foot.

"Oh, I've no patience with you."

"Besides, I haven't been asked," he added.

The others were not approaching and Markham straightened as Hermia came toward him.

"Olga, dear, we must be going. It's too bad to have spoiled your morning, Mr. Markham."

The obvious reply was so easy and so polite, but he scorned it.

"Oh, that doesn't matter," he said, "and I'm the gainer by a clean kitchen."

No flattery there. Hermia colored gently.

"I--I scrubbed his floor," she explained to Olga. "It was filthy."

The Countess Olga's eyes opened a trifle wider.

"I don't doubt it," she said, turning aside.

Miss Van Vorst in her role of ing?nue by this time was prying about outside the bungalow, on the porch of which she espied Markham's unfinished sketch.

"A painting! May I look? It's all wet and sticky." She had turned it face outward and stood before it uttering childish panegyric. "Oh, it's too perfectly sweet for anything. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite so wonderful. Won't you explain it all to me, Mr. Markham?"

Markham good-humoredly took up the canvas.

"Very glad," he said, "only you've got it upside down."

In the pause which followed the laughter Salignac came up the slope and reported to Hermia that he had found nothing wrong with the engine and that the damaged wing could be repaired with a piece of wire.

Hermia's eyes sparkled. The time for her triumphant departure, it seemed, had only been delayed. "Good news," she said quietly. "In that case I intend flying back to 'Wake-Robin'."

A chorus of protests greeted her decision.

"You shan't, Hermia," shouted Reggie Armistead, "until either Salignac or I have tried it out."

"You will oblige me, Reggie," replied Hermia calmly, "by minding your own business."

"O Hermia, after falling this morning! How can you dare?" cried Miss Van Vorst, with a genteel shudder.

"_Si Mademoiselle me permettrait_--" began Salignac.

But she waved her hand in negation and indicated the wide lawn in front of the ruined buildings which sloped gently to the water's edge.

"Wheel it there, Salignac," in French, "and, Reggie, please go at once and help."

Armistead's boyish face turned toward her in admiration and in protest, but he followed Salignac without a word.

"It's folly, Hermia," added Hilda. "Something _must_ be wrong with the thing. You remember just the other day--"

"I'm going, Hilda," imperturbably. "You can follow me in the launch."

Of Hermia's companions, Olga Tcherny alone said nothing. She had no humor to waste her breath. And Markham stood beside the group, his arms folded, his head bowed, listening. But when Hermia went into the cottage for her things he followed her.

"You're resolved?" he asked, helping her into her blouse.

"Well, rather."

"I wish I might persuade you--your nerves were--a little shaken this morning."

She paused in the act of putting on her gauntlets and held one small bare hand under his nose that he might see how steady it was. He grasped it in both of his own and then, with an impulse that he couldn't explain, kissed it again and again.

"Don't go, child," he whispered gently. "Not today."

She struggled to withdraw her hand, a warm flush stealing up her neck and temples.

"Let me go, Mr. Markham. Let me go."

He relinquished her and stood aside.

"As you please," he muttered. "I'm sorry--"

She turned, halfway to the door and examined his face.

"Sorry? For what?"

"That I haven't the authority to forbid you."

"_You?_" she laughed. "That _is_ amusing."

"I would teach you some truths that you have never learned," he persisted, "the fatuity of mere bravado, the uses of life. You couldn't play with it if you knew something of its value--"

"The only value of life is in what you can get from it--"

"Or in what you can give from it--"

"Good-bye, Mr. Markham. I will join your school of philosophy another day. Meanwhile--" and she pointed her gauntleted hand toward the open doorway, "life shall pay me one more sensation."