"And you're going to refuse it?"

"I must."

He still made no offer to take it from her, but looked persistently at her eyes.

"If I asked you quite straight," he said, "would you tell me quite straight--why?"

Now it must be the truth or the lie. No silence, no half-measures could answer here. She knew that he was at the very door of her heart, when it must either be slammed, bolted, locked in his face with a lie or flung, with the truth, wide open for him to enter if he chose.

She hesitated, it is true; but it was not the hesitation of indecision.

When, only a few moments before, her senses have been giddily balancing upon a precipice, saved from the hopeless downfall, only because the man put out no hand to pull her over, a woman is not likely to delay in doubt when at last he offers his hands, his eyes and his voice to drag her into the ultimate abyss of ecstasy.

Sally delayed, only with the natural instinct of reserve. Eventually, she knew she must tell him; if not in words, then by actions, looks--even by silence itself.

"I never thought you meant that bet," she began in timid procrastination.

"No--probably you didn't--but I did. And that's not the reason why you're returning it now. Supposing we sponge out the debt and I tell you to look upon it as a gift--would you keep it then?"

"No."

"Well--it's the wherefore of that I want to know. Why wouldn't you?"

"Because you have no right, no cause, to make me presents. You practically told me so yourself--you said good-bye."

"But don't you take all you can get?" he asked, almost with brutality.

So the pa.s.sion was stirring in him. All that came to his lips found utterance.

At any time, she would have resented that. Now she knew instinctively what the brutality in it expressed.

"No," she replied under her breath--"you might know I don't."

"And so you're returning this because I said good-bye--you're returning this because I said I was not the type of man who hugs the idea of matrimony. How could you take a gift from such a man--eh?

I suppose to you it savours almost of an insult. Yet, have you any conception what your returning it seems to me?"

She shook her head.

"It hurts. Do you think you'd feel inclined to believe that? You'd scarcely think I was capable of a wound to sentiment, would you? I am in this case. I gave you that, because I couldn't give you other things. That bangle was a sort of consolation to my thwarted wish to give. I'm quite aware that a woman gives most in a bargain; but a man likes to do a little bit of it as well. Half the jewellers'

shops in London 'ud have to close if he didn't. Some of 'em 'ud keep open I know for the women who are bought and prefer the bargain to be settled in kind rather than in cash. And jewellery pretty nearly always realizes its own value. But this was a gift--a subst.i.tute for other things that I would rather have given you."

He paused and looked steadily at her, her head drooping, her fingers idly, nervously bending the woven gold.

"Have you any idea what those other things were?" he asked suddenly.

"No," she said--but she did not offer her eyes to convince him of her reply.

"They were the alteration of all your circ.u.mstances. The smashing of the chains that gave you to that d.a.m.ned treadmill of a typewriter--the unlocking of the door that keeps you mewed-up in that little lodging-house in Kew--rubbing shoulders with bank-clerks, being compelled to listen to their proposals of suburban marriage, with the prospect of feeding your husband as the stable-boy feeds the horse when it comes back to the manger. Those were the things I wanted to free you from, and in their place, give you everything you could ask, so far as my limited income permits. I only wanted to give you the things you ought to have--the things you should have by right--the things you were born to. Your father was a clergyman--a rector. Why, down at Apsley, the rector comes and dines--for the sake of G.o.d--and respectability--and brings his daughters, dressed in their Sunday best--with low-necked frocks that make no pretence to be puritanical. And you slave, day after day, because your father, through no fault of yours, happened to come down in the world, while they sit in a comfortable rectory accepting the invitations of the county. I wanted to give you things that 'ud make your life brighter--_wanted_ to give them--would have found intense pleasure in seeing you take them from me."

Sally rose with a choking of breath to her feet. She could bear the strain no longer. It was like an incessant hammer beating upon her strength, shattering her resolve, until only the desire and the sense were left. She crossed with unsteady steps to the mantelpiece. He rose as well, and followed her.

"Oh--don't!" she moaned. But he took no notice. The impetus he had gained, carried him on. She could not stop him now.

"They were not much, certainly," he went on; "not much compared with what I wanted in return. What I wanted in return, was what no gentleman has the right to expect from any woman who is straight unless she willingly offers it--and you had called me a gentleman.

Do you remember that? I don't suppose you really knew when you said it, how much you were saving yourself from me. I wouldn't suggest that credit were due to me for a moment--it isn't. It was just the same as telling a man to do a brave act, when only the doing of it could save his life. I did it because I had to. To be a gentleman is often one chance in a lifetime, and the man who doesn't take it is not fit for hanging. Birth has nothing to do with it. You offered me my chance--I took it--that's all. But now you want to deprive me of my one consolation. You want to refuse that bangle. I refuse to take it back."

Sally turned and faced him. Her lips were set--her eyes had strange lights in them. She looked--as she felt--upon the scaffold of indecision, with the noose of fate about her neck.

"Oh, it is so hard! Why is it so hard?" she whispered.

"Why is what so hard?"

"This--all this."

He laughed ironically. Either he would not see, or he could not see.

Men may not be so dense as they appear. Sometimes it is a subconscious cunning that aids them in forcing half the initiative into the hands of the woman.

"Surely, it can't be so difficult a job to just snap the catch of that bracelet on your wrist, and forget all about whether I ought to have given it you or not."

"Oh, I don't mean that," she exclaimed, "you must know I don't mean that."

"Then what?" His whole manner changed. Now she had told him definitely. Now he knew without a shadow of doubt. She cared. It was even swaying in her mind whether she could bear to lose him, notwithstanding all he had said. It did not seem to him that he had worked her up to it. In that moment, he exonerated himself of all blame. He had danced gentleman to the clapping of her hands and the stamping of her foot; and if it came to this, that she cared for him more than convention, more than any principle, then it was not in his nature to force a part upon himself and play it, night after night, to an empty gallery. His hands caught her shoulders, the fingers gripping with pa.s.sion to her flesh. "Then what?" he repeated. "Do you mean you care for me? Do you mean that it's so hard to go--hard to say good-bye because of that? Is that what you mean?"

She could not answer yet. Even then the rope was not drawn and she could still faintly feel the scaffold boards beneath her feet.

"If I've made a rotten mistake," he went on, content on the moment in her silence to mis...o...b.. his own judgment. "If I've gone and jumped to this conclusion out of sheer conceit--misreading all I see in your eyes--translating all wrongly what I hear in your silence--you'll have to forgive me. I'm not trying to rush you into any expression of what you feel." He conscientiously thought he was not. "In fact, to tell you the honest truth, to me it seems that you--bringing back this bangle--holding from me your reason in doing so; you, stumbling over everything you say, and looking at me as you have done in the last few moments--that it's you who have dragged these things out of me. All my att.i.tude has been in trying to avoid them, because of what I thought you expected me to be. And now I think differently.

Am I right? Am I?" He turned her face to meet his eyes. "Am I?"

She raised her eyes once--let his take them--hold them--keep them.

Then the boards of the scaffold slipped away from under her feet--one instant the sensation of dropping--dropping; then oblivion--the noose of Fate drawn tight--the account reckoned. She swayed into his arms and he held her--kissing her hair, kissing her shoulders, her cheeks, her eyes--then, gently putting his hand beneath her chin, he lifted her face upwards, and crushed her lips against her teeth with kisses.

END OF BOOK I

BOOK II

THE DESERTER

CHAPTER I

Apsley Manor was one of those residences to be found scattered over the country, which are vaguely described as Tudor--memorials to the cultured taste in England, before the restoration with its sponge of Puritanical Piety wiped out the last traces of that refinement which Normandy had lent. Britain was destined to be great in commerce, and not even the inoculation of half the blood of France could ever make her people great in art as well.

It would be difficult to say the exact date when Apsley Manor was built. Certain it was that Elizabeth, in one of her progresses--the resort of a clever woman to fill a needy purse--had stayed there on her way to Oxford. The room, the bed even in which she was supposed to have slept, still remain there. Each owner, as he parted with the property, exacted a heavy premium upon that doubtful relic of history.