The Maids of Paradise Part 65

"No, madame."

"Then ... why do you believe it ... now?"

"Because, since we have become friends, life seems pitiably short for such a friendship."

She smiled without moving.

"That is a ... very beautiful ... compliment, monsieur."

"It owes its beauty to its truth, madame."

"And that reply is illogical," she said, turning to look at me with brilliant eyes and a gay smile which emphasized the sensitive mouth's faint droop. "Illogical, because truth is not always beautiful. As example: you were very near to death yesterday. That is the truth, but it is not beautiful at all."

"Ah, madame, it is you who are illogical," I said, laughing.

"I?" she cried. "Prove it!"

But I would not, spite of her challenge and bright mockery.

In that flash all of our comradeship returned, bringing with it something new, which I dared not think was intimacy.

Yet constraint fell away like a curtain between us, and though she dominated, and I was afraid lest I overstep limits which I myself had set, the charm of her careless confidence, her pretty, undissembled caprices, her pleasure in a delicately intimate badinage, gave me something of a self-reliance, a freedom that I had not known in a woman's presence for many years.

"We brought you here because we thought it was good for you," she said, reverting maliciously to the theme that had at first embarra.s.sed her. "We were perfectly certain that you have always been unfit to take care of yourself. Now we have the proofs."

"Mademoiselle Elven said that you harbored us only because you were afraid of those bandits who have arrived in Paradise," I observed.

"Afraid!" she said, scornfully. "Oh, you are making fun of me now.

Indeed, when Mr. Buckhurst came last night I had my men conduct him to the outer gate!"

"Did he come last night?" I asked, troubled.

"Yes." She shrugged her pretty shoulders.

"Alone?"

"That unspeakable creature, Mornac, was with him. I had no idea he was here; had you?"

I was silent. Did Mornac mean trouble for me? Yet how could he, shorn now of all authority?

The thought seemed to occur to her, too, and she looked up quickly, asking if I had anything to fear.

"Only for you," I said.

"For me? Why? I am not afraid of such men. I have servants on whom I can call to disembarra.s.s me of such people." She hesitated; the memory of her deception, of what she had suffered at Buckhurst's hands, brought a glint of anger into her beautiful eyes.

"My innocence shames me," she said. "I merited what I received in such company. It was you who saved me from myself."

"A n.o.ble mind thinks n.o.bly," I said. "Theirs is the shame, not yours, that you could not understand treachery--that you never can understand it. As for me, I was an accident, which warned you in time that all the world was not as good and true as you desired to believe it."

She sat looking at me curiously. "I wonder," she said, "why it is that you do not know your own value?"

"My value--to whom?"

"To ... everybody--to the world--to people."

"Am I of any value to you, madame?"

The pulsing moments pa.s.sed and she did not answer, and I bit my lip and waited. At last she said, coolly: "A man must appraise himself.

If he chooses, he is valuable. But values are comparative, and depend on individual taste.... Yes, you are of some value to me,... or I should not be here with you,... or I should not find it my pleasure to be here--or I should not trust you, come to you with my petty troubles, ask your experience to help me, perhaps protect me."

She bent her head with adorable diffidence. "Monsieur Scarlett, I have never before had a friend who thought first of me and last of himself."

I leaned on the back of the bench, resting my bandaged forehead on my hand.

She looked up after a moment, and her face grew serious.

"Are you suffering?" she asked. "Your face is white as my sleeve."

"I feel curiously tired," I said, smiling.

"Then you must have some tea, and I will brew it myself. You shall not object! No--it is useless, because I am determined. And you shall lie down in the little tea-room, where I found you that day when you first came to Trecourt."

"I shall be very happy to do anything--if you are there."

"Even drink tea when you abhor it? Then I certainly ought to reward you with my presence at the rite.... Are you dizzy? You are terribly pale.... Would you lean on my arm?"

I was not dizzy, but I did so; and if such deceit is not pardonable, there is no justice in this world or in the next.

The tea was hot and harmless; I lay thinking while she sat in the sunny window-corner, nibbling biscuit and marmalade, and watching me gravely.

"My appet.i.te is dreadful in these days," she said; "age increases it; I have just had my chocolate, yet here am I, eating like a school-girl.... I have a strange idea that I am exceedingly young,...

that I am just beginning to live. That tired, thin, shabby girl you saw at La Trappe was certainly not I.... And long before that, before I knew you, there was another impersonal, half--awakened creature, who watched the world surging and receding around her, who grew tired even of violets and bonbons, tired of the companionship of the indifferent, hurt by the intimacy of the unfriendly; and I cannot believe that she was I.... Can you?"

"I can believe it; I once saw you then," I said.

She looked up quickly. "Where?"

"In Paris."

"When?"

"The day that they received the news from Mexico. You sat in your carriage before the gates of the war office."

"I remember," she said, staring at me. Then a slight shudder pa.s.sed over her.

Presently she said: "Did you recognize me afterward at La Trappe?"

"Yes,... you had grown more beautiful."