The Streets of Ascalon Part 95

"She wasn't--really--horrid," said Strelsa in a low voice. "She told me so."

"I don't doubt it," he said. "But one way or the other you might as well reproach a humming-bird for its morals. There are such people."

After a short silence she said:

"Tell me about people in town."

"There are few there. Besides," he added smilingly, "I don't see much of your sort of people."

"_My_ sort?" she repeated, lifting her gray eyes. "Am I not your sort, Rix?"

"Are you? You should see me in my overalls and shirt-sleeves, stained with solvents and varnish, sticky with glue and reeking turpentine, ironing out a canvas with a warm flat-iron!... Am I your kind, Strelsa?"

"Yes.... Am I _your_ kind?"

"You always were. You know that."

"Yes, I do know it, now." She sat very still, hands folded, considering him with gray and speculative eyes.

"From the very beginning," she said, "you have never once disappointed me."

"What!" he exclaimed incredulously.

"Never," she repeated.

"Why--why, I got in wrong the very first time!" he said.

"You mean that wager we made?"

"Yes."

"But you behaved like a good sportsman."

"Well, I wasn't exactly a bounder. But you were annoyed."

She smiled: "Was I?"

"You seemed to be."

"Yet I sat in a corner behind some palms with you until daylight."

They looked at each other and laughed over the reminiscence. Then he said:

"I _did_ disappoint you when you found out what sort of a man I was."

"No, you didn't."

"I proved it, too," he said under his breath.

Her lips were set firmly, almost primly, but she blushed.

"You meant to be nice to me," she said. "You meant to do me honour."

"The honour of offering you such a man as I was," he said with smiling bitterness.

"Rix! _I_ was the fool--the silly little prig! I have blushed and blushed to remember how I behaved; how I snubbed you and--good heavens!--even lectured and admonished you!--How I ran away from you with all the self-possession and _savoir-faire_ of a country schoolgirl!

What on earth you thought of me in those days I dread to surmise----"

"But Strelsa, what was there to do except what you did?"

"If I'd known anything I could have thanked you for caring that way for me and dismissed you as a friend instead of fleeing as though you had affronted me----"

"I _did_ affront you."

"You didn't intend to.... It would have been easy enough to tell you that I liked you--but not that way.... And all those miserable, lonely, unhappy months could have been spared me----"

"Were _you_ unhappy?"

"Didn't you know it?"

"I never dreamed you were."

"Well, I was--thinking of what I had done to you.... And all those men bothering me, every moment, and everybody at me to marry everybody else--and all I wanted was to be friends with _you_!... I wasn't sure of what I wanted from the very beginning, of course, but I knew it as soon as I saw you at the Bazaar again.... I was _so_ lonely, Rix----"

She looked up out of clear, fearless eyes; he leaned forward and took her hands in his.

"I know what you want," he said quietly. "You want my friendship and you have it--every atom of it, Strelsa. I will never overstep the borders again; I understand you thoroughly.... You know what you have done for me--what I was when you came into my life. My grat.i.tude is a living thing. Through you, because of you, the whole unknown world--all of real life--has opened before me. You did it for me, Strelsa."

"You did it for yourself and for me," she said in a low voice. "What are you trying to tell me, Rix? That _I_ did this for _you_? When it is you--it was you from the first--it has always been you who led, who awakened first, who showed courage and common sense and patience and the cheerful wisdom which--which saved me----"

The emotion in her voice stirred him thrillingly; her hands lay confidently in his; her gray eyes met his so sweetly, so honestly, that hope awoke for a moment.

"Strelsa," he said, "however it was with us--however it is now, I think that together we amount to more than we ever could have amounted to apart."

"I know it," she said fervently. "I was nothing until I began to comprehend you."

"What was I before you awoke me?"

"A man neglecting his n.o.bler self.... But it could not have lasted; your real self could not have long endured that harlequinade we once thought was real life.... I'm glad if you think that I--something about me--aroused you.... But if I had not, somebody or some circ.u.mstance would have very soon served the same purpose."

"Do you think so?" he said, stooping to kiss her hands. She looked at him while he did so, confused by the quick pleasure of the contact, then schooled herself to endure it, setting her lips in a grave, firm line.

And it was a most serious face he lifted his eyes to as she quietly withdrew her fingers from his.

"You always played the courtier to perfection," she said, trying to speak lightly. "Tell me about that accomplished and n.o.ble peer, Lord Dankmere. Are you still inclined to like him?"

He accepted her light and careless change of tone instantly, and spoke laughingly of Dankmere:

"He's really a mighty nice fellow, Strelsa. Anyway, I like him. And _what_ do you think his lordship has been and gone and done?"