The Fighting Chance Part 21

He nodded.

She sprang to her feet, flushed, smiling, a trifle excited.

"Is it all over, and are we the very ideals of friends?" she asked.

"The very ideals."

"You are nice!" she said impulsively, holding out both gloveless hands.

He held them, she looking at him very sweetly, very confidently.

"Allons! Without malice?" she asked.

"Without malice."

"Without afterthoughts?"

"Without afterthoughts."

"And--you are content?" persuasively.

"Of course not," he said.

"Oh, but you must be."

"I must be," he repeated obediently.

"And you are! Say it!"

"But it does not make me unhappy not to be contented--"

"Say it, please; or--do you desire me to be unhappy?"

Her small, smooth hands lying between his, they stood confronting one another in the golden light. She might easily have brought the matter to an end; and why she did not, she knew no more than a kitten waking to consciousness under its first caress.

"Say it," she repeated, laughing uncertainly back into his smiling eyes of a boy.

"Say what?"

"That you are contented."

"I can't."

"Mr. Siward, it is unkind, it is shameless--"

"I know it; I am that sort."

"Then I am sorry for you. Look at that!" turning her left hand in his so that the jewel on the third finger caught the light.

"I see it."

"And yet--"

"And yet."

"That," she observed with composure, "is sheer obstinacy.

Isn't it?"

"It is what I said it was: a hopeful discontent."

"How can it be?" impatiently now, for the long, unaccustomed contact was unnerving her--yet she made no motion to withdraw her hands. "How can you really care for me? Do you actually believe that--devotion--comes like that?"

"Exactly like that."

"So suddenly? It is impossible!" with a twist of her pretty shoulders.

"How did it come--to you?" he asked between his teeth.

Then her face grew scarlet and her eyes grew dark, and her hands contracted in his--tightened, twisted fingers entangled, until, with a little sob, she swayed toward him and he caught her. An instant, a minute--more, perhaps, she did not know--she half lay in his arms, her untaught lips cold against his. La.s.situde, faint consciousness, then tiny shock on shock came the burning revulsion; and her voice came back, too, sounding strangely to her, a colourless, monotonous voice.

He had freed her; she remembered that somebody had asked him to--perhaps herself. That was well; she needed to breathe, to summon strength and common-sense, find out what had been done, what reasonless madness she had committed in the half-light of the silver-stemmed trees cl.u.s.tering in shameful witness on every hand.

Suddenly the hot humiliation of it overwhelmed her, and she covered her face with her hands, standing, almost swaying, as wave on wave of incredulous shame seemed to sweep her from knee to brow. That phase pa.s.sed after a while; out of it she emerged, flushed, outwardly composed, into another phase, in full self-possession once more, able to understand what had happened without the disproportion of emotional exaggeration. After all, she had only been kissed. Besides she was a novice, which probably accounted, in a measure, for the unreasonable emotion coincident with a caress to which she was unaccustomed. Without looking up at him she found herself saying coolly enough to surprise herself: "I never supposed I was capable of that. It appears that I am. I haven't anything to say for myself except that I feel fearfully humiliated.

Don't say anything now I do not blame you, truly I do not. It was contemptible of me--to do it--wearing this--" she stretched out her slender left hand, not looking at him; "it was contemptible!"

She slowly raised her eyes, summoning all her courage to face him.

But he only saw in the pink confusion of her lovely face the dawning challenge of a coquette saluting her adversary in gay acknowledgment of his fleeting moment of success. And as his face fell, then hardened into brightness, instantly she divined how he rated her, and in a flash realized her weapons and her security, and that the control of the situation was hers, not in the control of this irresolute young man who stood so silently considering her. Strange that she should be ashamed of her own innocence, willing that he believe her accomplished in such arts, enchanted that he no longer perhaps suspected genuine emotion in the swift, confused sweetness of her first kiss. If only all that were truly hidden from him, if he dare not in his heart convict her of anything save perfection in a gay, imprudent role, what a weight lifted, what relief, what hot self-contempt cooled! What vengeance, too, she would take on him for the agony of her awakening--the dazed chagrin, the dread of his wise, amused eyes--eyes that she feared had often looked upon such scenes; eyes no doubt familiar with such unimportant details as the shamed demeanour of a novice.

"Why do you take it so seriously?" she said, laughing and studying him, certain now of herself in this new disguise.

"Do you take it lightly?" he asked, striving to smile.

"I? Ah, I must, you know. You don't expect to marry me do you, Mr.

Siward?"

"I--" He choked up at that, grimly for a while.

Walking slowly forward together she fell into step frankly beside him, near him--too near. "Try to be sensible," she was saying gaily; "I like you so much--and it would be horrid to have you mope, you know. And besides, even if I cared for you, there are reasons, you know--reasons for any girl to marry the man I am going to marry. Does my cynicism shock you? What am I to do?" with a shrug. "Such marriages are reasonable, and far likelier to be agreeable than when fancy is the sole motive--certainly far more agreeable than an ill-considered yielding to abstract emotion with nothing concrete in view.

So, you see, I could not marry you even if I--" her voice was inclined to tremble, but she controlled it. Would she never learn her role? "even if I loved you--"

Then her tongue stumbled and was silent; and they walked on, side by side, through the fading splendour of the year, exchanging no further speech.

Toward sunset their guide hailed them, standing high among the rocks, a silhouette against the sky. And beyond him they saw the poles crowned with the huge nests of the fish-hawks, marking the last rendezvous at Osprey Ledge.

She turned to him as they started up the last incline, thanking him in a sweet, natural voice for his care of her--quite innocently--until in the questioning, unconvinced gaze that met hers she found her own eyes softening and growing dim; and she looked away suddenly, lest he read her ere she had dared turn the first page in the book of self--ere she had studied, pried, probed among the pages of a new chapter whose familiar t.i.tle, so long meaningless to her, had taken on a sudden troubling significance. And for the first time in her life she glanced uneasily at the new page in the book of self, numbered according to her years with the figures 23, and headed with the unconvincing chapter t.i.tle, "Love."

CHAPTER V A WINNING LOSER