"Does the charm of this land still continue to hold you, Jack?" she asked carelessly, pa.s.sing him a cup of tea.

"More than ever," he answered, lighting a cigarette and wondering what she was leading up to.

"Don't you think you have had about enough of it?" she continued, with just a shade of sarcasm in her voice. "You have had a royal vacation and I'm glad you have enjoyed yourself so thoroughly, but, honestly, don't you think it's about time you were returning to your work again, to the world to which you belong, of which you are a part and from which, in spite of all effort and argument, you cannot possibly separate yourself?

You know, I never could take your idea seriously, Jack," she added, with increasing confidence, addressing him as one would a naughty child. He only smiled by way of reply, and quietly blew a ring of smoke into the air.

"I see you are as obstinate and determined as ever," she continued rather petulantly. "Don't be overconfident though; you might fail, you know, and failure is always discouraging--it involves such a waste of time."

"If I do, it will be the first time I have failed." He was about to continue, but checked himself. They were getting on dangerous ground.

She understood his inference and colored and smiled. For some time neither spoke. A gold leaf, one of the first heralds of autumn, dropped silently down from the bough overhead to the center of the table. He took another sip of tea.

"Jack," she said at length, raising her eyes from her hands in her lap where she toyed with her fan, "supposing a position were offered you, one quite worth your while, would you return? Not immediately, but later on, when you have grown a little tired of playing at the game of life? In six months, say--or even a year if you like?" Her whole att.i.tude and expression had changed, and a look of pleading and expectancy shone from her eyes. Again he smiled. What was she driving at? he asked himself.

"I'm afraid it will be longer than that, Blanch," he answered. "Besides, what position could possibly be open to me? You know, my name is struck from the lists. At least, it ought to be if it isn't."

"Possibly," she answered. "But, if you cared enough, there might be another chance!"

"What do you mean?" he interrupted, regarding her curiously. In reply, she quietly drew an official doc.u.ment from her bosom and handed it to him across the table without a word. He colored, and she saw that his hand trembled slightly, betraying the emotion he felt as he opened the envelope and glanced hastily over its contents. "The Ministry to Turkey--Blanch!" he gasped, regarding her in astonishment.

"Yes," she answered nervously, watching closely the effect the news had upon him. "I received it a week ago. The President knows how clever you are, Jack, and has promised to keep the position open for you if you will consent to accept it. You know, he always had a warm place in his heart for you."

"Blanch!" he said again, overcome by emotion. And laying the doc.u.ment down upon the table in front of him he rose to his feet.

"Turkey, Jack, is but a step to London, St. Petersburg, Berlin or Paris," she said softly, looking up at him and catching her breath in the effort to conceal her excitement. "It is yours, Jack, if you wish it. Understand," she resumed, lowering her gaze and running her slender white hand slowly back and forth over the edge of her half-open fan, "that it is yours without reservation. You are under no obligations.

Turkey and--I are two different things," she added slowly and with difficulty, without looking up; her neck and face turning a deep scarlet. She felt the intensity of his blazing eyes upon her.

"Blanch!" he cried, and this time there was a note of anger in his voice. "Don't think me ungrateful, I beg of you. I appreciate what you have done, and I thank you with my whole heart, but--I can't do it, Blanch!"

"Jack!" she cried, throwing off the mask and springing to her feet. "I can't stand it any longer! I can't see you wreck your life in this way!

Can't you see the folly you are committing? Don't think me presumptuous; that I am trying to meddle, interfere in your life. I am merely trying to save you from yourself! It's your last chance, Jack. Go back again and never mind me; I've nothing to do with it! I can easily understand how this life can have a certain fascination for you, but only for a time; it can't last. The more I see of it, the more I'm convinced that I'm right. What's the use of mincing words, fencing about the truth any longer? I understand--I've seen it from the first. It's not this life, but the woman that holds you!" she cried abruptly and pa.s.sionately, almost fiercely, betraying her jealousy.

"Don't wreck your life and happiness before it is too late. You must tire of her as inevitably as you will tire of this life, and what then?

Can't you see that, when you have exhausted the glamour, and the fascination of things is gone, she would no longer be a companion to you? The difference between you--your lives, your world and hers, is too great. It is insurmountable--impa.s.sable! What can she know of the world which you and I know, to which you belong? Of another race, another blood, she must ever remain an alien, a thing apart from yourself; there can never be a true affinity between you. She is a savage--an aborigine sprung from the soil. The tinsel and veneer of civilization which she has acquired doesn't change her and can't endure. She is still a savage in spite of it, the product of savage ancestry living close to the soil.

The simplicity and glamour and freedom of this life casts a spell over one and attracts one of your adventurous nature, sated with the pleasures and luxuries of our world, but will the spell last? Once you have exhausted the simple, elemental joys of such a life, it must become irksome, mere animal existence, unbearable, positive boredom to you.

That in her which attracts you now must inevitably become commonplace in time and repel you. You could not endure that, Jack; you who are evolved through thousands of generations from a higher, superior race. Your reason and instinct must tell you that.

"Jack!" she cried in a fresh outburst, "we were made for one another!

How can she, an Indian, the product of savagery, understand you who are of a different race, the product of civilization? Your soul can never find the full response in hers that it can in mine. I know I was foolish--call it willful rather than foolish--the instinct that is born in me to command. I should not have let you go. I should have consented to share the life you proposed, but I did not believe you were in earnest; I did not think it would last. Besides, how could you have expected me to understand? It was too much; you had no right to ask it of me then. I thought, of course, you would come back to me again, Jack; I waited for that. Can't you understand? But you didn't come back, and I repented of my mistake a thousand times. We all make mistakes, Jack!"

His manhood revolted against being compelled to listen to her confession, her pleading. It was undignified, cowardly. It disgusted him and he hated himself for it, but what could he do?

"Don't say that, Blanch," he answered gently. "It is I who should ask forgiveness. I know it was too much to ask you to share such a life with me, but I did not realize it at the time. I wronged you, I know. I would gladly make reparation if I knew how."

"Oh! none of that virtuous, good-humored acquiescence, Jack! I want you to forget everything, all but the days before it happened, when you loved me--when you swore that your love was as constant as the stars!

Have you forgotten your oath? To be true to yourself, Jack, you must forget!" She paused. It was the first frank utterance she had made since her coming; and, for the time being, she seemed to have forgotten her resentment toward him.

"I have not changed, Jack," she went on. "I am the same as then; I only did not understand you. How could I have guessed that which lay buried within you, those latent ideals and conceptions of life which you yourself were ignorant of? But I understand you now, Jack. It was the foolish conceit of the girl's heart that caused me to forget what I owed you; but now it is the woman who speaks, who bares her soul to you, br.i.m.m.i.n.g full of love and pa.s.sion and tenderness for the man she loves and longs to protect--the woman who loves as the girl could never have loved, Jack."

The light that shone from her eyes bespoke the voice of her conscience; told him that she at least spoke the truth. Never had she appeared more beautiful, more fascinating and alluring than at this moment, as she stood before him, flushed and radiant and trembling with pa.s.sion, confused and indignant and ashamed; the woman rebelling within her at being thus forced to lay bare her soul, make confession before the man she loved. It was cruel and he knew it. Her words were like knife-thrusts at his heart, filling his soul to its depths with sympathy and compa.s.sion for her, and bitterness and loathing for himself.

The vision of yesterday with its gay scenes which he had cast aside, rose before him again. Its seductive allurements swept over him with redoubled force like a great compelling wave, filled with music and light and laughter, the false, seductive charms of which their present surroundings knew naught. The magic of her voice, her face, her touch had lost none of its charm. He felt her fascination still, in spite of himself and the bitterness of former days which he had cherished in his heart against her. The lure of the old life was strong upon him. He felt the hot blood rush to his face and heart; his being surged. She had been a part of his life, they had grown up together, and do what he would, her presence brought him face to face again with certain realities, with the old life which he thought was dead but which was not yet buried. When he looked upon her, he heard the old familiar sounds of the sea, of music and siren-voices of civilizations in their decay--breathed again the intoxicating atmosphere of that exotic, voluptuous, sensuous existence in which he had been reared and had lived, and with which he was saturated and from which he was striving to escape. But when he thought of Chiquita, he heard the murmur of forests and waters and saw the broad expanse of the plains and the wild crags and peaks that rear their heads heavenward, above which the eagles soar.

Nature beckoned with widespread arms to her child to come--the manhood within him cried for release, for the recognition of the individual's right to self-a.s.sertion.

Poets have sung of the raptures of first love, but was Blanch really his first love? The true first love is only that man or woman who can cause one to forget oneself. Somewhere deep down in our souls there's a something which sleeps until that hour when it suddenly bursts into flame, as it were, and the new man is born within us; and this is what had happened to him, though all unknown to himself, at the time when he first beheld Chiquita riding alone in the hills. In an instant his soul was aflame. He thrilled at the sight of her as she turned and rode away in the dusk, and felt like crying out to her to stop; that she was his, that she had been his from the beginning of time and he likewise hers; that he had been searching for her down the ages and had found her at last. All this and much more flashed through his mind as he gazed upon the beautiful vision of Blanch before him and felt the charm of her presence slowly creeping over him and fastening itself upon him in spite of his resistance like the subtle, mysterious influence of music or rich old wine.

For some time he seemed uncertain how to act or what to say. She noted it. His hesitation inspired her with fresh courage, causing her face and eyes to shine with the radiance of hope, dazzlingly beautiful. Her breath came quick and fast as she drew nearer to him and then seemed to cease altogether as she waited for his answer. All this he too noticed, and felt himself weakening under her spell. The suspense was as terrible for him as for her. A thousand memories rose from out the past and began pulling at his heart-strings. Inch by inch he felt himself slowly slipping back into the old life again, like a boat that has slipped her moorings and glides silently and almost imperceptibly out into the easy-flowing current. The struggle grew more intense within him as the minutes pa.s.sed. Great beads of perspiration broke out upon his brow as he listened to those voices whose sweetness and intensity increased with his hesitancy--those voices beneath whose charm and spell the strongest men have succ.u.mbed in the past.

"Blanch," he said at last, hoa.r.s.ely and almost in a whisper, "it takes a better man than I to say 'no' to you, and I don't say it. But I have changed." The mere fact of speaking and the sound of his voice seemed to recall him to himself, to the realization of where he was and what he was doing. He felt that he was still master of himself and his confidence slowly returned. "I know you can't understand," he continued.

"But somehow, I seem to have grown beyond you."

"Jack," she said, drawing still closer and laying her hand upon his arm and looking up into his face, "I know you have had more experience than I have had, but don't imagine that you have grown beyond me. Your ideas have caused me to think. I, too, have grown since we last parted. If you can give up the world, so can I. If you will not return again to the world with me, I'll remain here with you. I'll do anything you say!" she cried in pa.s.sionate surrender. "My body is soft perhaps in comparison to hers, but I'm strong. I'll soon be as strong as you or she and be all the more to you, infinitely more to you than she can ever be. I know I did you a great wrong in the past, Jack, but let me make up for it now.

It is my privilege, my debt to you, and your duty to let me do it. You have no right to break your promise to me, Jack. You can't. Your manhood must tell you that it is as sacred now as the day you gave it to me, and I hold you to it. I'll show you a love you have never known--can never know without me!" She drew still closer, laying her other hand upon his shoulder caressingly; her arm almost encircling his neck. He felt her warm, fragrant breath upon his lips and the thrilling, magnetic touch of her body, vibrating and pulsating with pa.s.sion and emotion. How soft and voluptuous and tempting and alluring that body and presence were! It was as though the spices and perfumes and sunshine of far away, mythical Cathay had suddenly descended upon him and enveloped him.

"Jack," she continued, "we have always been comrades, pals; we were made for one another! We are one in thought now as much as we ever were--more than we ever have been!"

He knew this to be false; that he possessed a grip on life which she did not; that he had pa.s.sed far beyond her since they had last parted. She had had her opportunity and had thrown it away. It was too late. She could not follow him now, she had missed the psychological moment. Even had she cast her lot with his in the beginning, he knew that she never could have followed him. She was immeshed; her feet were caught in the net. The blandishments of life had taken too deep root in her soul for her to cast them forth as he had done. And yet his conscience smote him for her sake, for what she suffered, that she was thus forced to humiliate herself before him. Sentiment and old memories surged up within him and urged him to keep her. What, after all, did it matter where or how they lived? The world would go on its way the same as it had always done; it didn't wish to be reformed and wasn't worth reforming.

"Take her! take her!" cried those voices more persistently than ever.

"Don't be a fool and miss this opportunity which, once gone, shall pa.s.s out of your life forever. She's as beautiful and as brilliant as the other woman; one of your own race and, after all, will wear as well.

Besides, you know her and you don't know the other woman, and if disappointed in the latter--what then? Take her!"

The vision of Glaire's wonderful conception, "The Lost Illusions," rose before him. He saw again that exquisite figure of the Egyptian, strong and sensitive, in the prime of manhood, seated upon the sh.o.r.e of the Nile, watching the bark of destiny laden with the fair illusions of youth, draw slowly away from him and grow fainter and fainter in the soft, mellow light of age, as it floated away on the evening tide of life. He, too, stood in the prime of manhood. Was this to be his end, mocked and laughed at by fate--the price he must pay for daring to lift his eyes from the dust to the stars to fulfill the dream of the ages?

G.o.d knew how he had fought against the invisible power that had driven him on step by step to his present state. He looked down into the beautiful upturned face of the woman before him whom he had known so long, whom he had loved and adored; gazed deep into those soft, azure eyes, limpid as two crystal pools, saw those full red upturned lips waiting to be kissed--kissed. Again her lips parted.

"Jack, Jack, Sweetheart, I'm waiting--" she murmured softly, encircling his neck completely with her arm and drawing his face gently down to her own. Just then the rhythmic silvery whir of wings caused them to look upward. Through the boughs of the tree they saw the indistinct form of a white dove that fluttered overhead for an instant and then was gone. At the same moment Captain Forest distinctly recognized the scent of Castilian roses, as though their fragrance had been wafted full in his face by a breeze, and yet there was no breeze, nor were there any roses close at hand; the season of roses had pa.s.sed.

No man could have resisted for long the fascinations of a woman like Blanch Lennox if she chose to make love to him. It was the sound of those wings and the fragrance of the roses that upheld Captain Forest's resolution; especially the fragrance of the roses. Whence it came or how it originated, who could say? For it came and pa.s.sed like a mere breath.

Perhaps the invisible angel who, it is said, presides over the destiny of the individual, caused it; for with it flashed the vision of Chiquita before his eyes as he had seen her on that day in the garden among the roses and had silently watched her from the back of his horse and breathed deep drafts of the flowery fragrance. The same subtle, invisible something that has changed the destiny of individuals and of nations through all the ages, caused him to remember, recalled him to himself. The manhood surged up within him, a.s.serting its supremacy, and he drew himself up with a sudden impulse. She noted the change, and in a fierce, pa.s.sionate voice, almost of terror, cried: "Jack, you are mine, you have always been mine! I will not give you up--I claim my own!" and she flung her arms pa.s.sionately about his neck in an endeavor to draw his lips down to her own.

"I can't--I can't do it, Blanch!" he said, and shook himself free. With a cry, terrible in its intensity and despair, she sank across the table.

XXVIII

Pale and trembling and humiliated, Blanch pulled herself together with an effort and stood for some time as one dazed where the Captain had left her. Then, she remembered, she had smiled and bowed absently to the men and women in the _patio_ on the way back to her room, where she flung herself down upon the couch in a frenzy, burying her face in the cushions; her frame shaking with pa.s.sionate, convulsive sobs as she writhed in paroxysms of untold grief and pain.

He had refused her, dared to refuse her--her! She had failed! Was this, then, the end, the reward for righteous ambition, conscientious endeavor? For years she had worked and schemed for the realization of her ideal, and this was the end. How proud she always had been of him, and how perfectly her beauty and brilliancy would have crowned his career--their lives! And now, when ambition's goal was attained, that rare cup of earthly joys of which few men drink, had been rudely dashed from her lips.

So this was the reward that had been reserved for her who had been endowed with wealth and position, and who was the fairest and best this civilization could produce? Fate had been kind to her merely in order that she might realize to the utmost the bitterness and emptiness of life.

Life--what did it mean, what did it hold for her now? She knew as well as Captain Forest did that, strong though she was, she was nevertheless too weak to share with him the life he had chosen. Civilization and culture had prepared her for everything but that; the one vital essential which nature alone can give to man was lacking. After all she was but a poor, helpless creature, incapable of meeting and being satisfied with the simple demands occasioned by the natural conditions of man's surroundings. Neither could she return to the old life again, now that it was shorn of its vital interest, and year after year cast her bread upon the waters in the uncertain pursuit of happiness, only to reap the harvest of dead-sea fruit that is ever borne in on the shallow tides of worldliness.

She recognized in herself the victim of a system of lies and frauds, a world of artificiality, deceit and tawdry tinsel, a life which, in spite of the good it contains, makes weaklings of men. Thanks to her bringing-up, the sunland of love, that valley of the earthly paradise, was closed to her forever. She cursed this world of hypocrisy and deception and all it contained--her friends and acquaintances and the memory of her father and mother, who unabashed, had perverted the pure, unsullied gaze of the child, directed its steps in the paths trodden by its degenerate forefathers, taught it to regard falsehood in the light of truth.

Let the world cry out in protest--say they did their best. The world lies, and knows it lies. They did not do their best. They followed the dictates of selfishness, despicable, inherent weakness. But why had this come to her who had been a willing instrument, who had lent herself to the dictates of this world and who, of all others, was the most fit to grace it?