The Lamp of Fate Part 21

Magda flashed him a swift glance.

"And yet," she said slowly, "I'm the 'type of woman you hate.'"

"You make it rather difficult to maintain the point of view," he admitted.

She was silent a moment.

"You were very unkind to me that day," she said at last.

Their eyes met and in hers was something soft and dangerously disarming.

Quarrington got up suddenly from his chair.

"Perhaps I was unkind to you so that I might not be unkind to myself,"

he replied curtly.

Magda's soft laugh rippled out.

"But how selfish! And--and aren't you being rather mysterious?"

"Am I?" he returned pointedly. "Surely self-preservation is the first instinct of the human species?"

She picked up the challenge and tossed it lightly back to him.

"Is the danger, then, very great?"

"I think it is. So, like a wise man, I propose to avoid it."

"How?"

"Why, by quitting the danger zone. I go to Paris to-morrow."

"To Paris?"

Magda experienced a sudden feeling of blankness. It was inexplicable, but somehow the knowledge that Quarrington was going away seemed to take all the savour out of things. It was only by a supreme effort that she contrived to keep her tone as light and unconcerned as his own as she continued:

"And then--after Paris?"

"After Paris? Oh, Spain possibly. Or the Antipodes!"--with a short laugh.

"Who's talking about the Antipodes?" suddenly chimed in Lady Arabella.

"Home to bed's my next move. Gillian, you come with me--the car can take you on to Hampstead after dropping me in Park Lane. And Virginie can drive back with Magda."

"Yes, do go with Marraine," said Magda, nodding acquiescence in reply to Gillian's glance of interrogation. "I have to dress yet."

There was a general move towards the door.

"Good-bye"--Magda's slim hand lay for a moment in Quarrington's. "I--I'm sorry you're going away, Saint Michel."

Only Michael heard the last two words, uttered in that _trainante_, slightly husky voice that held so much of music and appeal. He turned abruptly and made his way out of the room in the wake of Gillian and Lady Arabella.

"You'd better postpone your visit to the Antipodes, Mr. Quarrington,"

said the latter, as presently they all three stood together in the vestibule, halted by the stream of people pouring out from the theatre.

"I'm giving a dinner-party next week, with a 'crush' to follow. Stay and come to it."

"It's awfully kind of you, Lady Arabella, but I'm afraid it's impossible."

"Fiddlesticks! You're a free agent, aren't you?"--looking at him keenly.

A whimsical light gleamed for an instant in the grey eyes.

"I sometimes wonder if I am," he returned.

"There's only one cord I know of that can't be either unknotted--or cut.

And that's lack of money. That's not your complaint"--significantly.

"No."

"So you'll come?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Magda has promised to dance for me," proceeded Lady Arabella, entirely disregarding his quietly uttered negative. "They're not giving _The Swan-Maiden_ that night at the Imperial. She can't dine, of course, poor dear. Really, dancers have a lot to put up with--or rather, to put up _without_! Magda never dares to enjoy a good square meal. Afraid of getting fat, of course! After all, a dancer's figure's her fortune."

Like a low, insistent undertone beneath the rattle of Lady Arabella's volubility Michael could hear again the murmur of a soft, dragging voice: "I'm sorry you're going away, Saint Michel."

It seemed almost as though Lady Arabella, with that uncanny shrewdness of hers, divined it.

"You'll come, then?" She smiled at him over her shoulder, moving forward as the crush in the vestibule lessened a little.

And Michael, with an odd expression in his eyes, answered suddenly:

"Yes, I'll come."

Later, as Lady Arabella and Gillian drove home together, the former laughed quietly. There was an element of pride and triumph in the laughter. Probably the hen who has reared a duckling and sees it sail off into the water experiences, alongside her natural apprehension and astonishment, a somewhat similar pride in the startling proclivities evinced by her nurseling.

"That nice artist-man is in love with Magda," crowed Lady Arabella contentedly.

Gillian smiled.

"Do you think so?"

"I do. Only it's very much against his will, for some reason or other.

Crossing from Dover to-morrow, forsooth!"--with a broad smile. "Not he!

He'll be at my party--and asking Magda to marry him before the week's out, bar accidents! . . . After all, it's not surprising that the men are falling over each other to marry her. She's really rather wonderful.

Where do you think she gets it all from, Gillian, my dear? Not from the Vallincourts, I'll swear!"--chuckling.

Mrs. Grey shook her head.