Shadows of Flames Part 101

"You _are_ gorgeous to-night, ain't you?"

"You like my gown?" asked Sophy, smiling.

"Ripping," said Belinda.

"I rather like it myself," said Sophy. "I hope you like it, too, Morris?"

"Awfully smart ... you look awfully well...." he murmured.

Belinda left off fingering the flowers.

"I really ought to be going," she said.

"Yes. It's about time for you to go now," a.s.sented Sophy.

Her tone was quite even, yet at something in it those two winced.

Sophy had a cruel moment.

"Do you know," she said, "you and Morris both seem rather overstrung to me. What's the matter? You haven't been quarrelling again already, have you?"

Neither answered. Sophy repeated it. "Have you?" she said again.

"No," said Loring.

Belinda had taken up her wrap from a chair and was going towards the door.

"I think the carriage _must_ be there...." she said in a high, artificially anxious voice as she went. She almost ran into the arms of Simms, who had come to announce the brougham.

Sophy stood smiling and looking after her. Then, still smiling, she turned to Loring. It was a peculiar smile.

"Will _you_ tell me what has happened, Morris?" she said, and he thought her tone also very peculiar.

"'Happened'?... Why, nothing," he stammered.

He was appalled to hear himself stammering. He wondered with panic what his expression was like. It was in fact so puerile in its look of nervous guilt that Sophy was wrung with sudden shame for them both--for the man who looked at her with that weak, apprehensive smirk that sat so oddly on his pale face--for herself who had stooped to bring it there.

She turned away, saying: "We'd better be going, too, I think."

There was a biting acid of pain at work on her heart now. To have seen that look on his face--to have brought it there! She, who had once been "Selene" to him.

Loring stood gazing after her as she walked from him into the hall. Her beauty struck him as startling. But it struck him as the beauty of the Snow Queen struck Rudi. It left a sliver of ice in his heart. He was rather scared by something in her whole look and air. He wondered if Linda had noticed it. He'd have to talk things out with Linda to-morrow--take her for a long walk--off on the rocks somewhere. Things must be got into shape somehow. He had a spasm of sheer terror when he thought that Sophy might suspect something. Yet he couldn't give up Belinda. Yet he did not want to give up Sophy. Here again was the impenetrable wall and the irresistible ball. He had not yet realised that he alone was not the arbiter of their three destinies. He thought that it still remained with him to say what the future should or should not be for himself, for Belinda, for Sophy.

A dance followed the dinner to which they went that night. And Sophy danced for the first time in several weeks.

As soon as Amaldi saw her, with that tense, bright fever of beauty upon her, he knew that she was at some crisis. Something of this look she had had that night in London when he first met her. What was it? What had brought this strange, "fatal" look to her? Love and apprehension strung him to the utmost pitch. For he had seen agony under her bright cloak of exaltation. He feared now that he must have been mistaken. That her love for Loring still survived.... That this crisis at which she was came probably from the sudden discovery of how matters stood between her husband and Belinda Horton.

To Sophy that night was horrible. She did not even try to sleep. She rushed to and fro among throngs of turbulent thoughts, like a lost child in a Carnival--like one seeking a friend among frenzied revellers. Now she would think that she had found it--the thought that would befriend her. Then the mask would slip, and she would see the evil leer of revenge, or hatred, or personal malice, or self-centred wrath--not once the kind face of a thought worthy of her. But towards morning it came to her of its own will. She lay afterwards with closed eyes, spent and lifeless. That mental travail had been terrible. Now her good thought lay weakly on her heart like a babe outworn also by the fierce struggle of birth. It seemed scarcely to live. She had conceived it and brought it forth, but it was as though there were no strength in it. She lay there saying: "G.o.d ... help ... help...." as she had said so long ago, in that other dreadful time at Dynehurst. And as then, little by little, she became aware as it were of a vast Presence, and from this Presence there seemed to flow the help for which she had cried.

Belinda and Loring met very early in the lower hall as though by appointment. Neither had they slept well, but while Loring looked pale and rather haggard, the girl's face was fresh and beautifully ruddy with sea-water and defiant pa.s.sion. She had come up from her morning dip in the sea, all tingling with love like Anadyomene.

They had fruit and coffee together, then went for that "long walk to the rocks." When they were safely out of reach of prying eyes, Belinda turned, expecting a repet.i.tion of yesterday's wild embrace.

But Loring sat with his arms about his knees. He looked hara.s.sed and rather glum. He was staring at the sea. Belinda kept her eyes on him.

She had one of her admirable silences. She half knew what was coming, but she wanted Morry to "begin it."

"Linda," he said at last, still scowling at the milky-blue of the sea, "I rather think we're up against it--you and I...."

Belinda's eyes narrowed shrewdly.

"What's 'it,' Morry?" she asked.

He gave a jarring little laugh.

"'It' is ... Sophy."

"Mh!" said Belinda.

"Did it strike you last evening," he went on, "that she was ... well ...

er ... that she was a bit on to things?"

"Yes ... it did."

"Well ... er ... have you any notion why she was like that ... all at once ... so suddenly?"

Belinda dropped a pebble into a little pool in the rocks just below her.

She leaned over looking after it. Then she dropped in another. She was smiling secretly. Morris turned his head, as she did not answer. This smile nettled him somehow.

"Well...? Speak up, can't you?" he said sharply.

Belinda dusted her fingers daintily on her handkerchief, then laced them behind her head. This gesture drew the thin silk of her blouse tight over her round b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The little hollow behind her waist as she leaned against the dark rock was just large enough for a man's arm. She looked down sideways at him from under her thick, white lids and the garnet sparkles came into her eyes.

She pa.s.sed it to him coolly.

"Yesterday ... when we were in the library together," she said, "I ...

heard a chair move ... in the next room...."

"What?" cried Loring.

He sat erect. His face went scarlet, then white.

"_What?_" he said again.

Belinda nodded.