The Triflers Part 26

"Then," he asked, "you--you are to be here a little while?"

Marjory pa.s.sed her hand over her forehead.

"I don't know," she faltered.

Peter looked so thin! It was evident he had been long ill. She did not like to see him so. The shade over his eyes horrified her.

Beatrice came nearer.

"If you could encourage him a little," she whispered. "He has wanted so much to see you."

It was as if she in some way were being held responsible.

"You're not stopping here?" gasped Marjory.

"At the Hotel des Roses," nodded Beatrice. "And you?"

Peter with his haggard, earnest face, and Beatrice with her clear honest eyes, filled her with sudden shame. It would be impossible to make them understand. They were so American--so direct and uncompromising about such affairs as these.

Beatrice had the features of a Puritan maid, and dressed the part, from her severe little toque, her prim white dress reaching to her ankles, to her st.u.r.dy boots. Her blue eyes were already growing big at Marjory's hesitancy at answering so simple a question. She had been here once with Aunt Kitty--they had stopped at the Hotel d'Angleterre.

Marjory mumbled that name now.

"Then I may come over to-night to see you for a moment, may I not?"

said Beatrice. "It is time Peter went in now."

"I--I may see you in the morning?" asked Peter.

"In the morning," she nodded. "Good-night."

She gave him her hand, and he held it as a child holds a hand in the dark.

"I'll be over in half an hour," Beatrice called back.

It was only a few blocks to the Hotel d'Angleterre, but Marjory ran the distance. Happily the clerk remembered her, or she might have found some difficulty in having her excited excuse accepted that she was not quite suited at the Roses. Then back again to Henri and Marie she hurried, with orders to have the luggage transferred at once.

CHAPTER XV

IN THE DARK

In her new room at the Hotel d'Angleterre, Marjory dismissed Marie and buried her hot face in her hands. She felt like a cornered thing--a shamed and cornered thing. She should not have given the name of the hotel. She should have sought Monte and ordered him to take her away.

Only--she could not face Monte himself. She did not know how she was going to see him to-morrow--how she was ever going to see him again.

"Monsieur and Madame Covington," he had signed the register. Beatrice must have seen it, but Peter had not. He must never see it, because he would force her to confess the truth--the truth she had been struggling to deny to herself.

She had trifled with a holy thing--that was the shameful truth. She had posed here as a wife when she was no wife. The ceremony at the English chapel helped her none. It only made her more dishonest. The memory of Peter Noyes had warned her at the time, but she had not listened. She had lacked then some vision which she had since gained--gained through Monte. It was that which made her understand Peter now, and the wonder of his love and the glory and sacredness of all love. It was that which made her understand herself now.

She got to her feet, staring into the dark toward the seash.o.r.e.

"Monte, forgive me--forgive me!" she choked.

She had trifled with the biggest thing in his life and in her life.

She shouldered the full blame. Monte knew nothing either of himself or of her. He was just Monte, honest and four-square, living up to his bargain. But she had seen the light in his eyes--the eyes that should have led him to the Holy Grail. He would have had to go such a little way--only as far as her outstretched arms.

She shrank back from the window, her head bowed. It had been her privilege as a woman to be wiser than he. She should have known!

Now--the thought wrenched like a physical pain--there was nothing left to her but renunciation. She must help him to be free. She must force him free. She owed that to him and to herself. It was only so that she might ever feel clean again.

Moaning his name, she flung herself upon the bed. So she lay until summoned back to life by Marie, who brought her the card of Miss Beatrice Noyes.

Marjory took the time to bathe her dry cheeks in hot water and to do over her hair before admitting the girl; but, even with those precautions, Beatrice paused at the entrance as if startled by her appearance.

"Perhaps you do not feel like seeing any one to-night," she suggested.

"I do want to see you," answered Marjory. "I want to hear about Peter.

But my head--would you mind if we sat in the dark?"

"I think that would be better--if we are to talk about Peter."

The phrase puzzled Marjory, but she turned out the lights and placed two chairs near the open windows.

"Now tell me from the beginning," she requested.

"The beginning came soon after you went away," replied Beatrice in a low voice.

Marjory leaned back wearily. If there were to be more complications for which she must hold herself accountable, she felt that she could not listen. Surely she had lived through enough for one day.

"Peter cared a great deal for you," Beatrice faltered on.

"Why?"

It was a cry in the night.

Impulsively the younger girl leaned forward and fumbled for her hands.

"You did n't realize it?" she asked hopefully.

"I realized nothing then. I realized nothing yesterday," cried Marjory. "It is only to-day that I began to realize anything."

"To-day?"

"Only to-night."

"It was the sight of Peter looking so unlike himself that opened your heart," nodded Beatrice.

"Not my heart--just my eyes," returned Marjory.

"Your heart too," insisted Beatrice; "for it's only through your heart that you can open Peter's eyes."