The Moonlit Way Part 68

"I don't know what it is, but I'd rather you used me for your Arethusa. You know," she added wistfully, "that we began it together."

"Right, Sweetness. And we'll finish it together or not at all. Are you satisfied?"

She smiled, sighed, nodded. He released her lovely, childlike hands and she walked to the doorway of the summer house and looked out over the wall-bed, where tall thickets of hollyhock and blue larkspur stretched away in perspective toward a grove of trees and a little pond beyond.

His painter's eye, already busy with the beauty of her face and figure against the riot of flowers, and almost mechanically transposing both into terms of colour and value, went blind suddenly as she turned and looked at him.

And for the first time--perhaps with truer vision--he became aware of what else this young girl was besides a satisfying combination of tint and contour--this lithe young thing palpitating with life--this slender, gently breathing girl with her grey eyes meeting his so candidly--this warm young human being who belonged more truly in the living scheme of things than she did on painted canvas or in marble.

From this unexpected angle, and suddenly, he found himself viewing her for the first time--not as a plaything, not as a petted model, not as an object appealing to his charity, not as an experiment in altruism--nor sentimentally either, nor as a wistful child without a childhood.

Perhaps, to him, she had once been all of these. He looked at her with other eyes now, beginning, possibly, to realise something of the terrific responsibility he was so lightly a.s.suming.

He got up from his bench and went over to her; and the girl turned a trifle pale with excitement and delight.

"Why did you come to me?" she asked breathlessly.

"I don't know."

"Did you know I was trying to make you get up and come to me?"

"What?"

"Yes! Isn't it curious? I looked at you and kept thinking, 'I want you to get up and come to me! I want you to _come_! I _want_ you!' And suddenly you got up and came!"

He looked at her out of curious, unsmiling eyes:

"It's your turn, after all, Dulcie."

"How is it my turn?"

"I drew you--in the beginning," he said slowly.

There was a silence. Then, abruptly, her heart began to beat very rapidly, scaring her dumb with its riotous behaviour. When at length her consternation subsided and her irregular breathing became composed, she said, quite calmly:

"You and all that you are and believe in and care for very naturally attracted me--drew me one evening to your open door.... It will always be the same--you, and what of life and knowledge you represent--will never fail to draw me."

"But--though I am just beginning to divine it--you also drew _me_, Dulcie."

"How could that be?"

"You did. You do still. I am just waking up to that fact. And that starts me wondering what I'd do without you."

"You don't have to do without me," she said, instinctively laying her hand over her heart; it was beating so hard and, she feared, so loud.

"You can always have me when you wish. You know that."

"For a while, yes. But some day, when----"

"Always!"

He laughed without knowing why.

"You'll marry some day, Sweetness," he insisted.

She shook her head.

"Oh, yes you will----"

"No!"

"Why?"

But she only looked away and shook her head. And the silent motion of dissent gave him an odd sense of relief.

XXIII

A LION IN THE PATH

With the decline of day came enough of a chill to spin a delicate cobweb of mist across the country and cover forests and hills with a bluish bloom.

The sunset had become a splashy crimson affair, perhaps a bit too theatrical. In the red blaze Thessalie and Westmore came wandering down from the three pines on the hill, and found Barres on the lawn scowling at the celestial conflagration in the west, and Dulcie seated near on the fountain rim, silent, distrait, watching the scarlet ripples spreading from the plashing central jet.

"You can't paint a thing like that, Garry," remarked Westmore. Barres looked around:

"I don't want to. Where have you been, Thessa?"

"Under those pines over there. We supposed you'd see us and come up."

Barres glanced at her with an inscrutable expression; Dulcie's grey eyes rested on Barres. Thessalie walked over to the reddened pool.

"It's like a prophecy of blood, that water," she said. "And over there the world is in flames."

"The Western World," added Westmore, "I hope it's an omen that we shall soon catch fire. How long are you going to wait, Garry?"

Barres started to answer, but checked himself, and glanced across at Dulcie without knowing exactly why.

"I don't know," he said irresolutely. "I'm fed up now.... But----" he continued to look vaguely at Dulcie, as though something of his uncertainty remotely concerned her.

"I'm ready to go over when you are," remarked Westmore, placidly smiling at Thessalie, who immediately presented her pretty profile to him and settled down on the fountain rim beside Dulcie.

"Darling," she said, "it's about time to dress. Are you going to wear that enchanting white affair we discovered at Mandel's?"

Barres senior came sauntering out of the woods and through the wall gate, switching a limber rod reflectively. He obligingly opened his creel and displayed half a dozen long, slim trout.

"They all took that midge fly I described to you this afternoon," he said, with the virtuous satisfaction of all prophets.