"I knew it," cried Eveley ecstatically. "Nolan and I both said so.

Spontaneous combustion, that is what it was. Come and sleep with me again to-night. It is such fun to go to bed and turn out the light and talk.

Did you ever do it?"

"No, my life has not been of that kind."

"But you will learn. I never saw any one learn as quickly as you do,--especially things about men.--Now I shall begin by telling you how adorable Nolan is, and you must interrupt me to say how wonderful Jimmy is.--Did you ever have a sweetheart, Marie?"

Then she added quickly: "Wait, wait. I--I did not mean to ask questions,--Excuse me, I am sorry. Let's talk of something else."

"No, let's talk of lovers," said Marie, snuggling close to Eveley, her head lying against her shoulder. "I have never had the regular kind of a lover,--your kind,--the kind that women want. My life was full of war and horrors, and I had not time for the thrills of love. And the men I knew were not the men that one would wish to love one."

"Then, this is your chance," said Eveley happily. "Now I am positively sure that one of these days you will be a matchless American woman. You are just ripe and ready for love. You can't escape it, you sweet thing, even if you could wish. War and horrors were left behind in your old home. Here in your new home you will know only peace and contentment and love. Aren't you glad I adopted you? We must give Mr. Hiltze credit for that anyhow, mustn't we?"

There was a sudden tension in the slender figure at her side. "Eveley, are you so innocent? Do you never attribute evil motives to any one? Do you always believe only good and beautiful and lovely things of those you meet?"

"Well, I have no real reason for thinking mean or ugly things of any one--not really. I never had any horrors in my life until the war came. I have just lived along serenely and contentedly, and being fairly nice and kind, I have no guilty conscience to trouble me, and no one has ever been hateful or mean to me--not in anything that really counted."

Both were silent a moment, thinking, each in her different way, of the contrast in their lives. Then Eveley went on, more slowly:

"I feel sometimes that we are living on the crest of a terrible upheaval--that we are on the edge of a seething volcano which is threatening and rumbling beneath us, each day growing fiercer and more ominous, and that presently may come chaos, and we on the crater of life will be dragged down into the furnace with the rest. I suppose," she added apologetically, "it is because of the conditions that always follow a war, the political unrest, the social chaos, the anarchistic tendencies of every one. I am not in the midst of things enough to understand them, but even up here on the top of our canyon, we sometimes get a blast of the hot air from below, and it troubles us. Then we try to forget, and go on with our playing. But the volcano still rumbles beneath."

Eveley slipped her hand out to take Marie's and found it icy cold.

"Did--did you ever feel so before?" asked Marie in a low strange voice.

"That you were living on the rim of a volcano, ready to catch and crush you?"

"No, not before. It is just now--after the war. Conditions were never the same before."

Then Marie burst into a pa.s.sion of tears. "It is my fault," she sobbed.

"It is because I am here. All my life I have lived in the crater of a volcano, and I have brought it upon you. It is a curse I carry with me.

It is the chaos from which I have come, and to which I must go again when I leave you--it is that which destroys your peace."

Frightened and astonished, Eveley soothed her, cradling her in her arms.

"You little silly," she said tenderly. "You dear little goose. Don't you believe any such nonsense as that. We are in a condition of turmoil, our United States and all the rest of the world. It is not the affairs of your Mexico that worry me--it is the tempest in my own country. And don't you ever talk any more about going back. You shall never go back. You are to stay here with me forever and ever, world without end, amen. You will, won't you?"

Marie only stirred a little, and did not answer.

"Marie," cried Eveley, her voice sharp with fear. "Do you ever think really of going back to--that? Answer me." And she gripped Marie's soft shoulder with strong fingers.

"I do not think any more," said Marie gently. "But one always has a feeling that one must return whence one has come, do you not think? It is only that. It seems incredible that I, alone out of our struggling thousands, should be let to come away and live serenely in a cloud cote, does it not? And the struggle in Mexico goes on."

"The same kind of peace and contentment will come to all your country when the world is settled down to law and order once more," said Eveley, with the sublime faith of the young and the unsuffering. "It just takes time. And G.o.d was good enough to carry you away before the end of the conflict. Just wait. When our country is thoroughly Americanized, and returns to joyful work and love and life again, the contagion will spread to your people, and peace will reign there also. So do not talk any more nonsense about leaving me. Now let's go back to the beginning, and talk about--the men."

CHAPTER XVIII

CONVERTS OF LOVE

A very warm intimacy developed rapidly between the four friends, and every evening for nearly two weeks found them joyfully, even riotously, making merry together in the Cloud Cote. As Eveley had prophesied, Lieutenant Ames was hopelessly lost from the first, and Marie yielded herself very readily to the charm of an ardent wooing.

But with Eveley, Marie was different, more quiet, less demonstrative, sometimes plainly listless and absent-minded. Eveley ascribed the change to her newly developed interest in Lieutenant Ames, and patiently awaited the outcome of the ripening romance. For Eveley had a deep-seated sympathy with every appeal of love.

For many weeks she had received no word from Miriam Landis. Although she had pa.s.sed in an hour from all connection with their daily plans, yet she was never far from their thought. Even without their tender and sympathetic memories, they could not have forgotten her, for her husband was a frequent and always tumultuous visitor in the Cote.

He invariably began talking before he was through the window, and his first words were unfailingly the same.

"I can't stand it, Eveley, I simply can't stand it. You've got to do something about it."

Again and again he came with this appeal, always overlooking the fact that Eveley had no faintest idea of Miriam's whereabouts, for, true to her word, she had kept her hiding-place unknown to them all.

Then for several weeks he did not come, and Eveley felt that perhaps he was reconciled, and had returned to his old pursuit of secluded ballroom corners. But Nolan a.s.sured her of the injustice of this. Lem had forsaken all his former haunts, and had become a recluse, brooding alone in his deserted home.

"It will do him good, even if it does not last," Nolan said. "Almost any one would grieve for a woman like Miriam for a few months."

"Perhaps it is permanent this time, and there will be a reconciliation, and both live happily ever after," said Eveley, with her usual buoyant faith in the cheerful outcome.

Gordon Cameron she had seen only once since Miriam's departure, and that was when he came at her request to receive Miriam's message. He had listened quietly, while she repeated the words of her friend.

"I expected it, of course," he said at last gravely. "The pity of it is that her little revolution was so hopeless from the beginning. As long as a woman loves her husband, she can not hope for happiness, nor even for forgetfulness."

"Oh, she does not love her husband any more," said Eveley confidently.

"Not a bit. She is over that long ago."

"That was the whole trouble," he insisted. "If she had not loved him, she could have stood it and gone her way. But loving him, the situation was impossible for a woman of spirit and pride. Well, there is always one to pay in every triangle, and this time the bill comes to me. But I had antic.i.p.ated that from the beginning. She is a wonderful woman."

"Do you think she will go back to her husband?" asked Eveley breathlessly.

"I hardly think so. She might as well, though; perhaps it would be better. She can not be happy without him, and she was certainly not happy with him. It is only a choice of miseries. As long as she loves him, she will suffer for it. I begin to think that one who loves can not be happy."

"Oh, yes, one can. One is," a.s.serted Eveley positively.

"Perhaps I should say, when one is married to it," he added, with a sober smile for her a.s.surance.

Then he had gone away, and when Lem's pleadings had suddenly ceased, Eveley felt that the little tempest would live its life, and die its death, and perhaps Miriam at least would find happiness in the lull that followed.

So it was something of a shock to have her pleasant Sunday morning nap disturbed by Lem pounding briskly upon her window.

"Get up, immediately," he said in an a.s.sertive voice quite different from his futile and inane pleadings of a short while before. "Hurry, Eveley, I want you. Dress for motoring, my car is here. I shall wait in the garden--give you ten minutes."

"He must want me for a bridesmaid for his second wedding," thought Eveley resentfully, as she hurriedly dressed. But accustomed to obey the calls of friendship, she put on a heavy sport skirt and sweater, and had even pulled her soft hat over her curls before she went to the window.

"I am ready, but I do not approve of it," she began rather unpleasantly.

"You'd better take a doughnut, or a roll, or an orange, or something, for we have no time for breakfast," he said in the same a.s.sertive voice. "She will not be back until afternoon, Miss Ledesma. Sorry if it interferes with any of your plans, but it can not be helped. Get your coat, quickly, Eveley."