Shadows of Flames Part 121

He stood now, looking at her, his face inflamed with the strange fever of mingled hatred and desire. "_Faugh!_" he said at last, turning from her as from something sickening.

She laughed again, and began calmly selecting four of the largest lumps of sugar for her tea. As she did so, she hummed an air from the latest musical comedy. Oh, she had him! She had him "where she wanted him." He might rage round the arena of circ.u.mstance like an infuriated young bull. She was the Matadora who knew how to tame him.

He was back again in a moment or two. The red gleam of her cloak of insolence maddened and attracted him at the same time--just as a real Matador's cloak maddens and charms a real bull. He stood over her, hands in pockets, "to keep from wringing her neck," he told himself.

"Look here," he said. "I suppose you mean me to believe you love that bounder?"

"Why no---- What d'you take me for?" she said, a lump of sugar in one cheek. She crunched down on it contentedly with the last words.

"Better not ask what I take you for," said Loring hotly. "You're a cool hand, Linda; but I don't think you'd stay cool if I formulated my opinion of you."

"And I wonder if _you'd_ stay _at all_ if I gave _my_ opinion of _you_?"

asked she, grinning.

Loring clenched his hands that he still kept in his pockets.

"Do you mean to tell me," he said, "that you're going to marry this brute without loving him?"

"Oh, well.... Marriage 'makes the heart grow fonder,' they say," she retorted easily.

"Good G.o.d!... How dare you say such things to me ... to _me_?" burst out Loring furiously.

"And why not 'to you ... to _you_'?" she mimicked.

She slid suddenly from the edge of the table on which she had been perched, and went up close in front of him. The garnet fire blazed in her eyes now. Her black brows were drawn down close over them.

"See here, Morry," she said. "I'll give you a straight tip: You can't play dog-in-the-manger with _me_. You can behave decently to me or ...

clear out!"

It was Loring's turn to laugh.

"'Clear out'?" he exclaimed. "Well, of all the cool minxes!-- '_Clear out_' did you say? ... from my own mother's house?... I'd like to know how you mean to accomplish it?"

Belinda gave him a look of supreme and contemptuous insolence.

"_I'll tell Lewis the truth about you_," said she.

Then Loring "saw red." Without a word, he seized her in his arms.

"Aren't you afraid to say such things to me?" he demanded thickly.

"Aren't you afraid...?"

"No," said Belinda. But just for a second she was afraid. There had been such a gleam of dementia in his eyes.

"Yes, you are afraid," he said, still holding her fast. "Little devil ... you _are_ afraid.... And you need be ... you need be...." He laughed cruelly. "If I were an Oriental," he went on, "I'd cut off your lips for having let another man touch them...." His face suffused suddenly. He bent it down over hers. "Give them to me all the same...." he muttered.

"Give me your lips, Linda. They're mine...."

For answer, she pressed them inward until they were only a thin mark in her face. Her eyes glittered up at him, defiant, rebellious, fiercely mocking.

The pa.s.sion ebbed gradually from his own face. As he still held her, and she still continued to keep her full lips turned inward, he broke into a helpless, unwilling laugh. "Of all the little brutes...." he muttered unsteadily. At last he let her go. She backed away from him, then her lips curled free again, redder for their imprisonment. She smiled with impish delight at the success of her simple device.

"And yet women say they've been kissed against their wills!" she gurgled gleefully. "We _are_ liars ... we women, Morry, dear!"

Something in her tone gave him a queer hope. He went up to her again. He said in a voice that trembled a little:

"Have _you_ lied to _me_, Linda?... Was it a lie when you told me that beast had kissed you?... Had kissed your mouth?"

Belinda certainly had inspirations. She looked at him with her most melting yet most wayward look. Her dimples flickered.

"Well ... I guess he didn't enjoy the sort of kisses he _did_ get," she murmured.

"Linda...." whispered Loring. "Linda...."

The sudden revulsion of mood made him dizzy.

"Oh ... Linda," he repeated, and, putting out his arms, drew her to him again.

But she was quite serious now. Frowning a little, and swayed back stiffly in his grasp, she said:

"See here, Morry--you've called me some hard names. But I'll let that pa.s.s. I can understand that. What I can't understand, and what I won't let pa.s.s is your trying to keep me and your wife at the same time. I won't lie any more---- Yes.... I _did_ lie just now. It did me good all over, too!" And she showed her white teeth in a rather fierce little smile. "But I won't lie any more. I _don't_ love Lewis Cuthbridge-- I rather loathe him ... but as sure as I live ... as we both live ...

unless you break free ... unless you get that divorce, or let her divorce ... I'll marry Lewis within two months. Mind you...." she added, as she felt his arms tighten convulsively, "I'm not lying.... I mean it."

Loring's face looked drawn and curiously hunted.

As she spoke, his eyes followed the movements of her full, soft lips.

They curled into such lovely curves when she talked--now hiding her little fine, white lower teeth, now revealing them.

"And if I say I'll do it ... then ... will you kiss me?" he whispered.

A wild thrill sang through Belinda. Her arms, which had been hanging at her sides, whipped round him. She strained him to her.

"If you'll _swear_ it ... I will," she whispered back.

"And ... and ... you'll ... give yourself to me ... you'll chuck that brute ... at once?"

Respectability, the only chaperon that ever influenced Belinda, warned sharply. She relaxed her hold of him a little. Her voice took a keener note.

"D'you mean ... will I marry you when you're free?"

Loring paled, then the blood rushed to his face again.

"Yes ... d.a.m.n it ... I mean that," he said.

She eyed him for a few seconds narrowly. Then she said:

"You swear it?"

"I swear it," he muttered.