The Wheel of Life Part 40

"In danger of losing my head, do you mean?" she asked, "Wasn't that question answered when I ran away?"

But the next instant she burst into a laugh of ridicule, and threw herself back into the chair upon the hearthrug, with the particular fall of drapery by which she delighted the eyes of her audience in the opera house.

"I asked your man to bring me tea, for I'm famished," she remarked; "do you think he has forgotten it?"

"He had, probably, to go out to buy the cakes," he replied, with a touch upon the bell which was immediately answered by Wilkins bearing the silver tray. As she rose to make tea, Kemper took the fur boa from her shoulders and held it for a minute to his nostrils.

"You use the same perfume, I notice," he observed.

She waited until the door had closed upon Wilkins, and then looked up, smiling, as she handed him his cup.

"There are two things one should never change," she returned, "a perfume and a lover."

With a laugh he tossed the fur upon the sofa. "By Jove, you've arrived at the conventional morality at last."

"Is it morality?" she rejoined sweetly, "I thought it was experience."

"Well, any way, you're right and I'm moral," he remarked, "the joy of living, after all, is not in having a thing, but in wanting it."

"Which proves, as I have said," she concluded, "that one love is as good as a thousand."

There was a sharp edge of ridicule to his glance; but the words he spoke were uttered from some mere impulse of audacity.

"I wonder if I taught you that?" he questioned.

Leaning slightly forward she clasped her large white hands upon her knees; and the position, while she kept it, showed plainly the rounded ample length of her figure.

"I might tell you the truth--but, after all, why should I?" she demanded.

An emotional curiosity which was almost as powerful as love flamed in his face. How much or how little did she feel? he wondered; and the vanity which was the inspiration of his largest as well as his smallest pa.s.sion, dominated for the time all other impressions which she produced.

"Would it be possible for you to tell the truth if you tried?" he asked.

"I never try--all the harm on earth comes from women telling men the truth. It is the woman who tells the truth who becomes--a door mat. If I ever felt myself in danger of speaking the truth--" she hesitated for a quick breath, while her eyes drew his gaze as by a cord--"I would run away."

It was his turn to breathe quickly now. "You did run away--once."

"I ran because--" her voice was so low that he felt it like a breath upon his cheek.

"Because?" he echoed impatiently; and the vehemence in his tone wrought an immediate change in her seductive att.i.tude. With a laugh that was almost insolent, she rose to her feet and looked indifferently down upon him.

"Oh, that's over long ago and we've both forgotten. I came to-day only to ask the honour of your presence at my first concert."

An impulse to irritate her--to provoke her into an expression of her hidden violence--succeeded quickly the curiosity she had aroused; and he felt again the fiendish delight with which, as a savage small boy, he had prodded the sleeping wild animals in their cages in the park.

"I'm not sure that I can arrange it," he responded, "I may be off on my honeymoon, you know."

"Ah, yes," she nodded while he saw a perceptible flicker of her heavy eyelids, "but when, if I'm not impertinent, does the interesting event take place? I might be able to postpone my concert," she concluded jestingly.

He shook his head. "You can't do that because I expect it to last forever."

"One usually does, I believe, but it is easy to miscalculate. Have you a photograph visible of the lady?"

He shook his head, but with the denial, his glance travelled to a picture of Laura upon his desk; and crossing the room, she took it up and returned with it to the firelight, where she dropped upon her knees in order to study it the more closely.

"Has she money?" was her first enquiry at the end of her examination.

"If she has I am not aware of it," he retorted angrily.

"Well, I wonder what you see in her," she remarked, with her attentive gaze still upon the picture, "though she looks as if she'd never let a man go if she once got hold of him."

Her vulgar insolence worked him into an uncontrollable spasm of anger; and with a smothered oath he wrenched the photograph from her and flung it into the open drawer of his desk.

"She is too sacred to me to be made the subject of your criticism," he exclaimed.

Whether she was frankly offended or unaffectedly amused he could not tell, but she burst into so musical a laugh that he found himself listening to it with positive pleasure.

"There! there! don't be foolish--I was only joking," she returned, "please don't think for one minute that it's worth my while to be jealous of you."

"I don't think so," he replied, with open annoyance, "but I wish you wouldn't come here."

She had taken up her fur and stood now wrapping it about her throat, while her eyes were fixed upon him with an expression he found it impossible to read. Was it anger, seduction, pa.s.sion or disappointment?

Or was it some deeper feeling than he had ever believed it possible for her face to show?

"It is the last time, I promise you," she said, "but do you know why I came this afternoon?"

"Why?--no, and I doubt if you do."

For a moment she was silent; then he watched the curious physical fascination grow in her smile.

"I came because I had a very vivid dream about you on the boat last night," she said, "I dreamed of that evening, during the first winter, in my dressing-room after the second act in 'Faust.' I thought I had forgotten it, but in my sleep it all came clearly back again--every minute and--"

"And?" the word burst from him eagerly as he leaned toward her.

"I broke a bottle of perfume, do you remember?" her soft laugh shook in her full, white throat, "your coat still smelt of it next day, you said."

Her wonderful voice, softened now to a speaking tone, seemed to endow each word, not only with melody, but with form and colour. They became living things to him while she spoke, and the night he had almost forgotten, stood out presently as in the glow of a conflagration of his memory. He smelt again the perfume which she had spilled on his coat; he saw again the fading roses, heaped on chairs and tables, that overflowed her dressing room. It was the night of her great triumph--the eyes with which she looked at him still held the intoxication of her own music--and it was to the applause of a mult.i.tude, that, alone with her behind the scenes, he had first taken her in his arms.

"It's all over, I tell you," he said angrily; "so what's the use of this?"

"It's never over!--it's never over!" she repeated in her singing voice.

She was very close to him at last; but breaking away with an effort, he crossed the room and laid his hand upon the door.

"It was over forever two years ago," he said, "and now good-bye!"

He held out his hand, but without taking it, she stood motionless while she looked at him with her unchanging smile.

"Then I'll let it be good-bye," she answered, "but not this way--not just like this--"