The Knave of Diamonds Part 50

He turned his face to the sinking sun. It shone like a smouldering furnace behind bars of inky cloud.

"You told me once," he said, speaking with obvious constraint, "that you did not think you would ever live with him again."

She stifled a sigh in her throat. "I thought so then."

"And what has happened to make you change your mind?"

Anne was silent. She could not have seen the fire that leapt and darted in the dusky eyes had she been looking at him, but she was not looking.

Her chin was back upon her hand. She was gazing out into the darkening world with the eyes of a woman who sees once more departed visions.

"I think," she said slowly at length, as he waited immovably for her answer, "that I see my duty more clearly now than then."

"Duty! Duty!" he said impatiently. "Duty is your fetish. You sacrifice your whole life to it. And what do you get in return? A sense of virtue perhaps, nothing more. There isn't much warming power in virtue. I've tried it and I know!" He broke off to utter a very bitter laugh. "And so I've given it up," he said. "It's a trail that leads to nowhere."

Anne's brows drew together for an instant. "I hoped you might come to think otherwise," she said.

He shrugged his shoulders. "How can I? I've lived the life of a saint for the past six months, and I am no nearer heaven than when I began. It's too slow a process for me. I wasn't made to plough an endless furrow."

"We all of us say that," said Anne, with her faint smile. "But do we any of us really know what we were made for? Are we not all in the making still?"

He thrust out his chin. "I can't be abstruse tonight. I know what I was made for, and I know what you were made for. That--anyway for tonight--is all that matters."

He spoke almost brutally, yet still he held himself as it were aloof. He was staring unblinking into the sunset. Already the furnace was dying down. The thunder-clouds were closing up. The black bars had drawn together into one immense ma.s.s, advancing, ominous. Only through a single narrow slit the red light still shone.

Mutely they watched it pa.s.s, Anne with her sad eyes fixed and thoughtful, Nap still with that suggestion of restrained activity as if he watched for a signal.

Gradually the rift closed, and a breathless darkness came.

Anne uttered a little sigh. "I wish the storm would break," she said. "I am tired of waiting."

As if in answer, out of the west there rose a long low rumble.

"Ah!" she said, and no more.

For as if the signal had come, Nap turned with a movement incredibly swift, a movement that was almost a spring, and caught her up into his arms.

"Are you tired of waiting, my Queen--my Queen?" he said, and there was a note of fierce laughter in his words. "Then--by heaven--you shall wait no longer!"

His quick breath scorched her face, and in a moment, almost before she knew what was happening, his lips were on her own. He kissed her as she had never been kissed before--a single fiery kiss that sent all the blood in tumult to her heart. She shrank and quivered under it, but she was powerless to escape. There was sheer unshackled savagery in the holding of his arms, and dismay thrilled her through and through.

Yet, as his lips left hers, she managed to speak, though her voice was no more than a gasping whisper. "Nap, are you mad? Let me go!"

But he only held her faster, faster still.

"Yes, I am mad," he said, and the words came quick and pa.s.sionate, the lips that uttered them still close to her own. "I am mad for you, Anne. I worship you. And I swear that while I live no other man shall ever hold you in his arms again. Anne--G.o.ddess--queen--woman--you are mine--you are mine--you are mine!"

Again his lips pressed hers, and again from head to foot she felt as if a flame had scorched her. Desperately she began to resist him though terribly conscious that he had her at his mercy. But he quelled her resistance instantly, with a mastery that made her know more thoroughly her utter impotence.

"Do you think that you can hold me in check for ever?" he said. "I tell you it only makes me worse. I am a savage, and chains of that sort won't hold me. What is the good of fighting against fate? You have done it as long as I have known you; but you are beaten at last. Oh, you may turn your face from me. It makes no difference now. I've played for this, and I've won! You have been G.o.ddess to me ever since the day I met you.

To-night--you shall be woman!"

He broke into a low, exultant laugh. She could feel the fierce beating of his heart, and her own died within her. The blaze of his pa.s.sion ringed her round like a forest fire in which all things perish.

But even then she knew that somewhere, somewhere, there was a way of escape, and with the instinct of the hunted creature she sought it.

"To-night," she said, "I shall know whether you have ever really loved me."

"What?" he said. "You dare to question that now? Do you want to put me to the proof then? Shall I show you how much I love you?"

"No," she said. "Take your arms away!"

She did not expect his obedience, but on the instant he spread them wide and released her.

"And now?" he said.

She almost tottered, so amazing had been his compliance. And then as swiftly--came the knowledge that he had not really set her free. It had pleased him to humour her, that was all. He stood before her with all the arrogance of a conqueror. And through the gathering darkness his eyes shone like the eyes of a tiger--two flames piercing the gloom.

She mustered all her strength to face him, confronting him with that unconscious majesty that first had drawn him to her.

"And now," she said, "let us once and for all understand one another."

"What?" he said. "Don't you understand me yet? Don't you realise--yet--that when a man of my stamp wants a woman he--takes her?"

Again there throbbed in his voice that deep note of savagery, such savagery as made her quail. But it was no moment for shrinking. She knew instinctively that at the first sign of weakness he would take her back into his arms.

She straightened herself therefore, summoning all her pride. "Do you really think I am the sort of woman to be taken so?" she asked. "Do you really think I am yours for the taking? If so, then you have never known me. Nor--till this moment--have I known you."

He heard her without the faintest hint of astonishment or shame, standing before her with that careless animal grace of his that made him in some fashion superb.

"Yes," he said, "I really do think you are mine for the taking this time, but you will admit I've been patient. And I've taken the trouble to make things easy for you. I've spirited you away without putting you through any ordeals of hesitation or suspense. I've done it all quite un.o.btrusively. To-morrow we go to London, after that to Paris, and after that--whithersoever you will--anywhere under the sun where we can be alone. As to knowing each other"--his voice changed subtly, became soft, with something of a purring quality--"we have all our lives before us, and we shall be learning every day."

His absolute a.s.surance struck her dumb. There was something implacable about it, something una.s.sailable--a stronghold which she felt powerless to attack.

"Doesn't that programme attract you?" he said, drawing nearer to her.

"Can you suggest a better? The whole world is before us. Shall we go exploring, you and I, alone in the wilds, and find some Eden that no man has ever trodden before? Shall we, Anne? Shall we? Right away from everywhere, somewhere in the sun, where I can teach you to be happy and you can teach me to be--good."

But at his movement she moved also, drawing back. "No!" she said. Her voice was low, but not lacking in strength. Having spoken, she went on almost without effort. "You are building upon a false foundation. If it were not so, I don't think I could possibly forgive you. As it is, I think when you realise your mistake you will find it hard to forgive yourself. I have treated you as a friend because I thought I could do so with safety. I thought for the sake of my friendship you had given up all thought of anything else. I thought you were to be trusted and I trusted you. Oh, I admit I ought to have known you better. But I shall never make that mistake again."

"No," Nap said. "I don't think you will."

He spoke deliberately; he almost drawled. Yet a sense of danger stabbed her. His sudden coldness was more terrible than his heat.

"But why say this to me now?" he said. "Do you think it will make any difference?"

He had not moved as he uttered the words, and yet she felt as if he menaced her. He made her think of a crouching tiger--a tiger whose devotion had turned to sudden animosity.

She did not shrink from him, but her heart quickened. "It must make a difference," she said. "You have utterly misunderstood me, or you would never have brought me here."