The Hermit of Far End Part 17

She handed him his cup and poured out another for herself. Then she said lightly:

"I heard you order your car. Is this quite a suitable afternoon for joy-riding?"

"More so than for walking," he retaliated. "I'm going to drive you home."

"At six o'clock?"

"At six o'clock."

"And suppose I wish to leave before then?"

He cast an expressive glance towards the windows, where the rain could be heard beating relentlessly against the panes.

"It's quite up to you . . . to walk home."

Sara made a small grimace of disgust.

"Otherwise," she said tentatively, "I am going to stay here, whether I will or no?"

He nodded.

"Yes. It's my birthday, and I'm proposing to make myself a present of an hour or two of your society," he replied composedly.

Sara regarded him with curiosity. He had been openly displeased to find her trespa.s.sing on his estate--which was only what current report would have led her to expect--yet now he was evincing a desire for her company, and, in addition, a very determined intention to secure it. The man was an enigma!

"I'm surprised," she said lightly. "I gathered from a recent remark of yours that you didn't think too highly of women."

"I don't," he replied with uncompromising directness.

"Then why--why----"

"Perhaps I have a fancy to drop back for a brief s.p.a.ce into the life I have renounced," he suggested mockingly.

"Then you really are what they call you--a hermit?"

"I really am."

"And feminine society is taboo?"

"Entirely--as a rule." If, for an instant, the faintest of smiles modified the grim closing of his lips, Sara failed to notice it.

The cold detachment of his answer irritated her. It was as though he intended to remain, hermit-like, within his sh.e.l.l, and she had a suspicion that behind this barricade he was laughing at her for her ineffectual attempts to dig him out of it with a pin.

"I suppose some woman didn't fall into your arms just when you wanted her to?" she hazarded.

She had not calculated the result of this thrust. His eyes blazed for a moment. Then, a shade of contempt blending with the former cool insouciance of his tone, he said quietly:

"You don't expect an answer to that question, do you?"

The snub was unmistakable, and Sara's cheeks burned. She felt heartily ashamed of herself, and yet, incongruously, she was half inclined to lay the blame for her impertinent speech on his shoulders. He had almost challenged her to deal a blow that should crack that impervious sh.e.l.l of his.

She glanced across at him beneath her lashes, and in an instant all thought of personal dignity was wiped out by the look of profound pain that she surprised in his face. Her shrewd question, uttered almost unthinkingly in the cut-and-thrust of repartee, had got home somewhere on an old wound.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she exclaimed contritely.

She could only a.s.sume that he had not heard her low-voiced apology, for, when he turned to her again, he addressed her exactly as though she had not spoken.

"Try some of these little hot cakes," he said, tendering a plateful.

"They are quite one of Mrs. Judson's specialties."

With amazing swiftness he had rea.s.sumed his mask. The bright, hazel eyes were entirely free from any hint of pain, and his voice held nothing more than conventional politeness. Sara meekly accepted one of the cakes in question, and for a little while the conversation ran on stereotyped lines.

Presently, when tea was over, he offered her a cigarette.

"I have not forgotten your tastes, you see," he said, smiling.

"I do smoke," she admitted. "But"--the confession came with a rush, and she did not quite know what impelled her to make it--"I smoked--that day in the train--out of sheer defiance."

"I was sure of it," he responded in amused tones. "But now"--striking a match and holding it for her to light her cigarette--"you will smoke because you really like it, and because it would be a friendly action and condone the fact that you are being held a prisoner against your will."

Sara smiled.

"It is a very charming prison," she said, contemplating the harmony of the room with satisfied eyes.

"You like it?" he asked eagerly.

She looked at him in surprise. What could it matter to him whether she liked it or not?

"Why, of course, I like it," she replied. "Who wouldn't? You see," she added a little wistfully, "I have no home of my own now, so I have to enjoy other people's."

"I have no home, either," he said shortly.

"But--but this----"

"Is the house in which I live. One wants more than a few sticks of furniture to make a home."

Sara was struck by the intense bitterness in his tone. Truly this man, with his lightning changes from boorish incivility to whole-hearted hospitality, from apparently impenetrable reserve to an almost desperate outspokenness, was as incomprehensible as any sphinx.

She hastily steered the conversation towards a less dangerous channel, and gradually they drifted into the discussion of art and music; and Sara, not without some inward trepidation--remembering Molly's experience--touched on his own musicianship.

"It was surely you I herd?" she queried a trifle hesitatingly. "You were playing some Russian music that I knew. Your man ordered me off the premises"--smiling a little--"so I didn't hear as much as I should have liked."

"Is that a hint?" he asked whimsically.

"A broad one. Please take it."

He hesitated a moment. Then--