"But--if I go to-night--the others will say _I_ did it! I can't run away if you do such thing! I can not go into Mexico but they shall arrest me before I am at the border----"

"Eurasian pig, I shall admit the killing!" she said with a green gleam in her eyes that perhaps was laughter.

"Yes, my Marya," he explained in agony, the sweat pouring from his temples, "but if they think me your accomplice they shall arrest me.

Me--I can not wait--I shall be ruined if I am arrest! You do not comprehend. I have not said it to you how it is that I am compel to travel with some money which--which is not--my own."

Marya looked at him for a long while. Suddenly she flung the pistol into a corner, threw back her head while peal on peal of laughter rang out in the room.

"A thief," she said, fairly holding her slender sides between gemmed fingers: "--Just a Levantine thief, after all! Not a thing to shoot.

Not a man. No! But a giant c.o.c.kroach from the tropics. Ugh! Too large to place one's foot upon!----"

She came leisurely forward, halted, inspected him with laughing insolence:

"And the others--Kastner, Sondheim--and the other vermin? You were quite right. Why should I kill them--merely because to-day a real man died? What if they are the same species of vermin that slew Vanya Tchernov? They are not men to pay for it. My pistol could not make a dead man out of a live louse! No, you are quite correct. You know your own kind. It would be no compliment to Vanya if I should give these vermin the death that real men die!"

Puma stood close to the door, furtively pa.s.sing a thick tongue over his dry, blanched lips.

"Then you will not interfere?" he asked softly.

She shrugged her shoulders: one was bare with the torn sleeve dangling. "No," she said wearily. "Run home, painted pig. After all, the world is mostly swine.... I, too, it seems----" She half raised her arms, but the gesture failed, and she stood thinking again and staring at the curtained window. She did not hear him leave.

CHAPTER XXIII

In the strange, springlike weather which prevailed during the last days of January, Vanya was buried under skies as fleecy blue as April's, and Marya Lanois went back to the studio apartment where she and Vanya had lived together. And here, alone, in the first month of the new year, she picked up again the ravelled threads of life, undecided whether to untangle them or to cut them short and move on once more to further misadventure; or to Vanya; or somewhere--or perhaps nowhere. So, pending some decision, she left her pistol loaded.

Afternoon sunshine poured into the studio between antique silken curtains, now drawn wide to the outer day for the first time since these two young people had established for themselves a habitation.

And what, heretofore, even the lighted mosque-lamps had scarcely half revealed, now lay exposed to outer air and daylight, gilded by the sun--cabinets and chests of ancient lacquer; deep-toned carpets in which slumbered jewelled fires of Asia; carved G.o.ds from the East, crusted with soft gold; and tapestries of silk shot with amethyst and saffron, centred by dragons and guarded by the burning pearl.

Over all these, and the great mosque lantern drooping from above, the false-spring sunshine fell; and through every open window flowed soft, deceptive winds, fluttering the leaves of music on the piano, stirring the cl.u.s.tered sheafs of growing jonquils and narcissus, so that they swayed in their Chinese bowls.

Marya, in black, arranged her tiger-ruddy hair before an ancient grotesquerie set with a reflecting gla.s.s in which, on some days, one could see the form of the Lord Buddha, though none could ever tell from whence the image came.

Where Vanya had left his music opened on the piano rack, the sacred pages now stirred slightly as the soft wind blew; and scented bells of Frisia swayed and bowed around a bowl where gold-fish glowed.

Marya, at the piano, reading at sight from his inked ma.n.u.script, came presently to the end of what was scored there--merely the first sketch for a little spring song.

Some day she would finish it as part of a new debt--new obligations she had now a.s.sumed in the slowly increasing light of new beliefs.

As she laid Vanya's last ma.n.u.script aside, under it she discovered one of her own--a cynical, ribald, pencilled parody which she remembered she had scribbled there in an access of malicious perversity.

As though curious to sound the obscurer depths of what she had been when this jeering cynicism expressed her mood, she began to read from her score and words, playing and intoning:

"CROQUE-MITAINE.

"Parfait qu'on attend La Maree Rouge, La chose est positive.

On n'sait pas quand el' bouge, Mais on sait qu'el' arrive.

La Maree Rouge arrivera Et tout le monde en crevera!

"Croque'morts, sacristains et abbes, Dans leurs sacre's boutiques Se cachent aupres des machabe's En repetant des cantiques.

Pape, cardinal, et sacre soeur Miaulent avec tout leurs cliques, Lorsque les Bolsheviks reprenn 'nt en choeur; Mort aux saligaudes chic!

"La Maree Rouge montera Et la bourgeoisie en crevera!"

The vicious irony of the atrocious parody--words and music--died out in the sunny silence: for a few moments the girl sat staring at the scored page; then she leaned forward, and, taking the ma.n.u.script in both hands, tore it into pieces.

She was still occupied in destroying the unclean thing when a servant appeared, and in subdued voice announced Palla and Ilse.

They came in as Marya swept the tattered sc.r.a.ps of paper into an incense-bowl, dropped a lighted match upon them, and set the ancient bronze vessel on the sill of the open window.

"Some of my vileness I am burning," she said, coming forward and kissing Ilse on both cheeks.

Then, looking Palla steadily in the eyes, she bent forward and touched her lips with her own.

"Nechevo," she said; "the thing that dwelt within me for a time has continued on its way to h.e.l.l, I hope."

She took the pale girl by both hands: "Do you understand?"

And Palla kissed her.

When they were seated: "What religious order would be likely to accept me?" she asked serenely. And answered her own question: "None would tolerate me--no order with its rigid systems of inquiry and its merciless investigations.... And yet--I wonder.... Perhaps, as a lay-sister in some missionary order--where few care to serve--where life resembles death as one twin the other.... I don't know: I wonder, Palla."

Palla asked her in a low voice if she had seen the afternoon paper.

Marya did not reply at once; but presently over her face a hot rose-glow spread and deepened. Then, after a silence:

"The paper mentioned me as Vanya's wife. Is that what you mean? Yes; I told them that.... It made no difference, for they would have discovered it anyway. And I scarcely know why I made Vanya lie about it to you all;--why I wished people to think otherwise.... Because I have been married to Vanya since the beginning.... And I can not explain why I have not told you."

She touched a rosebud in the vase that stood beside her, broke the stem absently, and sat examining it in silence. And, after a few moments:

"As a child I was too imaginative.... We do not change--we women.

Married, unmarried, too wise, or too innocent, we remain what we were when our mothers bore us.... Whatever we do, we never change within: we remain, in our souls, what we first were. And unaltered we die....

In morgue or prison or Potter's Field, where lies a dead female thing in a tattered skirt, there, hidden somewhere under rag and skin and bone, lies a dead girl-child."

She laid the unopened rosebud on Palla's knees; her preoccupied gaze wandered around that silent, sunlit place.

"I could have taken my pistol," she said softly, "and I could have killed a few among those whose doctrines at last slew Vanya.... Or I could have killed myself."

She turned and her remote gaze came back to fix itself on Palla.

"But, somehow, I think that Vanya would grieve.... And he has grieved enough. Do you think so, Palla?"

"Yes."

Ilse said thoughtfully: "There is always enough death on earth. And to live honestly, and love undauntedly, and serve humanity with a clean heart is the most certain way to help the slaying of that thing which murdered Vanya."