"A very curious one, but very exciting! A precipice that I can see right here in this room!"

"An old one?"

"Not at all! Quite new!" She made a pretense of simulating it on the rug, to pa.s.s mockingly under his eyes, daintily, with steps that trod on air. "Do you want to know where it is?"

"Where?"

"It runs from the tip of this mischievous, naughty red slipper, right straight across the carpet, to--let me see! where does it go?

Over--over--over here!"

She came with her head down, peeping up from under her eyelashes, balancing with her hands on an imaginary line, straight by him, laughing to herself, and pa.s.sed so close that he felt the flutter of her dress and the warm perfume from her hair.

"Little devil!" he said between his teeth, and flinging out his hand, caught her retreating shoulder.

She wrenched herself free, sprang away and turned, blazing with anger, forgetting all that she had done wilfully, maliciously, to tantalize him--illogical, unreasoning, wildly revolting at the acquiring touch of this male hand on her free body.

"How dare you!" she cried, advancing on him, gloriously enraged, fists clenched. "How dare you! You--you contemptible--you--oh, you brute, brute! You dare to touch me again--you dare!" She turned suddenly, striking him on the chest with her little fists, crude, futile, repeated blows, choking with shame, still in the dramatized mood. "You dared--you dared! And I trusted--oh!"

He did not retreat, opposing no resistance to the frantic drumming of her blows, watching her coldly, with something besides ice in the intensity of his mocking glance. Then, when from lack of breath her rage spent itself a moment, he said calmly, his glance in her glance, as a trainer's subduing a revolted animal, deliberate, slow, imperative:

"Now, stop acting!"

She caught herself up, tried to answer and found only another furious gesture.

"I said, stop acting!" he repeated bruskly, and stepping to her, caught her in his arms. She cried out in a m.u.f.fled strangled voice, turning, twisting, flinging herself about fruitlessly in the iron of his embrace.

He held her silently until she ceased to struggle; and then his eyes continued to hold her eyes, fixed, imperious, compelling her gaze. She remained quiet--very quiet, looking at him startled, in doubt, seeing in him something new, masterful. And as he continued steadily looking into her eyes, penetrating beyond, overcoming all resistance, a smile came to her, a smile of confession, gathering from the cloudy blue of her eyes, running down the curve of her cheek, playing about the thin upturned lips. He bent his head deliberately. She did not turn aside her lips....

Then on this embrace came another, a convulsive frantic clinging of the lips, a kiss which conquered them both, flinging a mist across their eyes, stopping their ears, stilling their reason. This kiss, which went through her like a flame, blinding out the world, hurling into her brain a new life and a new knowledge, caught him, too, in the moment when he felt the strongest, the most able to dare. Neither his eyes nor his brain had foreseen this--nor the touch of her arms twining about his neck. He had a moment of vertigo in which he suddenly ceased to think.

He kissed her again, and she answered hungrily, whispering:

"I didn't know! Ah, you've come--"

All at once his mind cleared as if a hand of ice had touched his forehead. He tried to put her arms from him, aroused, suddenly frightened at where he had been whirled by the immense combustibility of nature. But still she clung to him, her eyes closed, her lips raised, repeating:

"At last--oh, at last!"

"What have I done?" he said to himself, conscious-stricken at her glorified face. He stiffened against the soft arms, that sought to draw him back, saying hoa.r.s.ely:

"Dodo--listen, Dodo!"

But she shook her head, pervaded suddenly by an incomprehensible ecstasy of weakness, the oblivion of absolute surrender. She opened her eyes once, and let them close again heavily.

"Please," she said in a whisper, "don't--don't say anything. Don't talk.... It's all too wonderful!"

Then, abruptly, he tore her away from him, grasping his coat, placing a table between them.

"To-morrow!" he said, in a voice he did not recognize, knowing not what to believe, afraid of what he might say, amazed that all his will had gone.

She gave a cry, extending her hands to him.

"No! Oh, don't go!"

"I must, Dodo! I must!"

"How can you?" she cried. "How cruel!"

She covered her face suddenly, and her whole body began to tremble.

"Good night!" he said hurriedly, a prey to a wild tugging that bade him leap to her.

She did not answer, swaying in the center of her room, shaken from head to foot.

"Good night!" He took a long breath and repeated: "Good night, Dodo!"

Still she did not answer.

"To-morrow!"

No longer trusting himself, he flung through the door, out and down the stairs.

She went herself across the room, her knees sinking under her, groped for the door, weakly closed it and turned the key. And for the first time she was afraid!

How was it possible that she, who had known so much, who had feared so little, should suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, have been overwhelmed, caught and mastered? What did it mean? And this question brought with it a fierce delirious joy in her moment of panic. For she was in fear--of many things known, and things uncomprehended: fear of where she had pa.s.sed; fear of where she was going; of him!

Had it been only a game, or had he, too, been caught as she had been caught? Fear there was of the flames that lay in his touch, fear of that blank moment when she had known nothing, cared nothing, with the sudden starting horror with which once she had come out of a swoon. But most of all she had a fear of the fire that had broken out within her, in that first awful, lawless moment, in which the knowledge of life had come to her in blinding realization.

"Do I--is it love? If not, what is it? Why am I so?"

But this time she did not dramatize her mood. She found no answer, slowly recovering mastery of herself. She remained with her back against the door, her arms extended, barring the return, bewildered, weak, revolted, happy, fearing, listening.

Suddenly the sound of a returning step--a tapping on the door, irresolute, and a voice calling to her.

It was Ma.s.singale.

So! He had not been able to go! In a flash she was again the free Salamander, emerging out of the fire of conflict, triumphant by the last dramatic hazard. And being her own mistress again, she made no mistake.

She drew herself up, arms barring the door in the sign of a cross.

"Not now!" she said breathlessly.

He did not answer. She heard his step on the stairs, descending. When, at last, her arms fell, there was a gleam of exultation in her eyes.

Whatever this might mean, wherever it might lead, she knew now, by that momentary yielding weakness of his return, that she would be--in the last crisis--the stronger!

CHAPTER X

Dore went to bed at once--not to sleep, for she felt in her mind a cold clarity that seemed impervious to fatigue, but in order to avoid conversation with Snyder. She did not at once return over the surprising moments of the night. From her pillow the flushed clock-face of the Metropolitan Tower came bulging into the room. She watched it with a contented numbness of the senses, striving to follow the jerky advance of the minute-hand, conscious only of the fragrance and pleasure of the cool bed-linen, dreamily awake, prey to a delicious mental languor.