I a.s.sented, and we pa.s.sed out of the dining-room into the hall and up the shallow flight of stairs. I put my right hand on the banister and my left arm round her waist, and the whole sweet figure beside me, and the white neck and ear so near me, drove out the thoughts of a minute back, and I only laughed as I felt her waist contract convulsively as I touched it.

"Would you like to take my arm better?" I said, mockingly, and drew her round to me so that the soft face was just beneath my own. In the subdued light of the staircase she lifted her lids, and I saw her eyes, gleaming and sparkling, br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with gaiety and pleasure, and the arm next me she raised and twisted close round my neck.

"No, Victor; here is the place for my arm now! You won't push it away as you did in Paris, will you?"

The words hurt cruelly. Could I never obliterate that wretched memory?

It was vivid with her; it clung to me. It seemed a shadow d.o.g.g.i.ng my present pleasure. I stopped suddenly on the staircase and took her wholly into my arms. All the supple form yielded at my touch, till it leaned hard against my own; the face, pallid with excitement, was raised to mine; the glitter of her eyes swam before my vision as I caught it from beneath the half-drooped lids; the lips, parted in a faint breath, then closed as mine joined them. As they touched, no consciousness was left except that both our lives seemed mingling, panting, fainting on our lips.

The pain that is pleasure, and the pleasure that is pain, thrilled and pierced every nerve as I held her and felt those lips under mine, her heart beat under my heart, her weak arms twisted round my throat. When at last my lips set hers free, on fire with the pa.s.sion of my own, they moved in a half-delirious murmur,--

"Victor, you don't know how I love you!"

I have no distinct recollection of pa.s.sing up the remaining stairs, but we did reach the landing, and a second or two later were standing in the drawing-room. I think she said it was pretty, and so on, but I hardly heard, my head was reeling, and all my senses dull, her figure leant a little against me, and the pressure of her arm was upon mine.

After the drawing-room, the reading-room, and a breakfast-room, all opening from the same corridor, had been pa.s.sed through, there were still two rooms unexplored on that floor. I turned the handle of the nearer door, and then pushed it open.

Lucia stepped on to the threshold, and then I felt her arm start violently in mine, and she drew back with a sharp, instinctive movement.

I looked down upon her and murmured,--

"Our room, dearest."

The colour blazed all over the fair skin, till it seemed scorching it, and tears startled into the dismayed eyes, which she turned from me confusedly, as she shrank back into the pa.s.sage.

I was startled, and a chill seemed to fall upon me, and penetrate deeper as a grey pallor succeeded to the burning flush, and she had to lay one trembling hand on my arm again for actual support.

"Victor, it is nothing!" she said, hurriedly, forcing a smile to her lips.

"It--it--startled me."

She made a nervous step forward, as if she would have forced herself to enter the room with me, but I collected myself with a great effort, and gently drew the door shut.

"There is another sitting-room a little farther on; come and look at it," I said, quietly, in a light, indifferent tone, as if we were meeting in society for the first time.

I drew her on past the door, feeling her hand fluttering on my arm, and her feet uncertain beside my own. Inwardly I was alarmed--dismayed. Her extreme nervousness, and the physical effect upon her, frightened me.

With crushing force and clearness came back to me the remembrance of the fearless, eager, unrestrained abandonment of body and mind, the gay exuberance of careless pa.s.sion, with all the vigour of youth and health in it, that had leapt up to meet my caress a year ago,--and been refused. We pa.s.sed on to a door on the other side of the corridor, which opened to another sitting-room. A lovely evening had given way to a lovelier night. Beyond the long window panes, set open to the still air, we caught sight of the sinking golden crescent of the moon towards the south; above and all round, to the low horizon, the sky was crowded, sparkling, and brilliant with stars. I moved two chairs close up to the open window, but she stood by the sill and leaned forward to the night air.

"You think me very silly?" she said, with her head turned away from me.

"I think you are not well, dearest," I said, gently.

There was silence. Words seemed frozen on my lips. A sort of terror filled me of exciting or embarra.s.sing her. I stood beside the window frame watching her. After a minute or two she dropped back into a chair and looked up at me with a laugh.

"I think I am all right, only you startled me! By the way, Victor, if anything ever does happen to me, you will remember you have your work and your talent to turn to, won't you? I mean you would not do anything desperate. I want you to promise me that."

She lay back in the easy chair, burying her light head and polished white shoulder in the velvet cushion, and swinging one little foot idly as she looked up smiling for her answer. The bright light in the room fell full upon her, and I looked down upon this brilliant piece of life, full of glowing tints and warm pulses and subtle powers, and my brain flamed with the pleasure of the senses. I hardly noted her words.

"Dear little girl!" I said, smiling back into her eyes. "I refuse to think of such things at all!"

"Oh, well, it doesn't matter! I don't expect you would," she said, laughing, the colour leaping up in her cheeks, and the vivid blue deepening behind her lashes. "Come and make much of me now while you have got me."

Her whole face and form were instinct with a delicious invitation, and I bent down to and over her, filled with the delight of the moment. We made one chair do for both of us, and looked through the window at intervals to escape each other's eyes, and laughed at nothing, and talked a very extraordinary astronomy. At last, with her soft fingers in my hair and on my throat, and her white arm above the elbow clasped in my hand, speech, even laughter, grew choked in dense feelings for all the command I kept upon myself; and we sat in silence, hearing each other's breath, feeling each pulse that beat in the other's throat and breast.

There had been a long silence when the last star of Orion slid over the horizon, followed by my impatient eyes. I looked at my watch. I hardly know why I did it then. It was an involuntary action rather than a conscious one. I did not say anything as I replaced it, but she glanced sharply at me, and I saw her lips whitened.

I knew the intense excitement that was moving her, it spoke to me in every line of her form--in her eyes, torn wide open by it, in the faint gleam of sweat that showed on the white forehead. I was not blind to it, but the tumult within me, made all the greater by the sight of it, left me insensible to its danger for her.

She got up from where we were sitting, and began to walk restlessly round the table. I wheeled my chair slightly round so that I could watch her. Nothing struck me particularly as I did so except the extreme grace and attraction in the moving form. The heavy silk skirt dragged backwards and forwards over the carpet almost soundless, the moonlight and gaslight alternately gleaming on its folds. Each time that she came between me and the table my eyes followed with dizzy delight the soft side curve of her breast, the lines of the exquisite waist, the white idle hand that sometimes touched the edge of my chair arm, sometimes not, as she pa.s.sed. One of these times I caught it and detained her, and looked up at her face, but the light was behind her, and only fell on the bright hair.

"Why do you walk about so?" I asked.

"I don't know. Victor, I feel very strange. I hope nothing is going to happen. I never felt quite like this before;" and she broke her hand loose from me and pa.s.sed on.

I sprang up and followed her, and put my arm round her.

"Going to happen, dearest! What do you mean? Do you feel ill?"

I looked at her. She was very white, and her lips were parted and pale.

There was a distressed and strangely absent look upon her face which startled me, though I had no clue to its significance.

"Yes, very ill," she answered, her eyes wandering away from my anxious ones looking down at her, as we stood for a moment together.

Then she gently pushed away my arm and continued her walk.

"You know my heart always does beat and hurt if I am very happy, or very excited, or any thing, but it's never been quite so bad as this before." And then, catching the distress upon my face, she added, "I daresay this is nothing. It will go off. I think it is only hysterical.

Don't look so unhappy!" And a faint smile swept over her pallid face.

She made her way to the sideboard and drank some water standing there.

Then she continued to move slowly round the room, both hands pressed beneath her left breast, and her delicate eyebrows contracted into one dark line across her colourless face.

"I overworked myself so tremendously just lately," she said, after a minute, "after--well, after I came to you in Paris. I shall take a long rest now. I hope I shall get strong again. When one is as delicate as this, life is not worth having."

And then, before I could answer, she stopped suddenly, and looked across the room at me with dilated eyes.

"Is there any brandy I could have?" she asked, abruptly.

My handbag stood in the corner of the room. There was a flask of brandy there. In two seconds I had got it out and was beside her with the traveling-gla.s.s half filled.

She took it with a fluttering, uncertain hand, and drank a little, but not even then did the colour come back to her lips--they were apart and grey. She set the gla.s.s down on the table with a wandering, undecided movement, and then turned towards me and linked two ice-cold hands round my neck,--

"Hold me up! I am sinking!" and her head fell heavily against my shoulder.

I clasped my arm firmly round her waist. I was startled, distressed, alarmed, but still, even then, I did not think there was any serious danger. I thought she was hysterical, as she had said; over-strained, and over-excited. I thought at most this was a fainting attack. I thought--G.o.d knows what I thought. I must have been blind.

She put her hand to her throat, and I saw she wanted air. Supporting her, I crossed to the window, and stood where the cool night breeze came blowing in upon her face. My hand followed hers to her bodice, and I loosened all the delicate lace ruffles round it that it had never been my privilege to touch till now, and that were no whiter than the lovely breast from which I unloosed them.

So we stood for a few seconds, her lids were drooped over her eyes. At intervals, it seemed to me, her heart gave great single, convulsive throbs that thudded through both our beings.

Then suddenly she tore her eyes wide open, and fixed them in an unreasoning agony upon me. A straining, fearful effort seemed in them.