"Don't," she implored. "You mustn't love me like that, Alan. You must not."

"How can I help it, sweetheart? I am no iceberg. I am a man and you are the one woman in the world for me. I love you--love you. I want you. I'm going to have you--make you mine--marry you, bell and book, what you will, so long as you are mine--mine--mine."

Tony set down her basket, clasped her hands behind her and stood looking straight up into his face.

"Listen, Alan. I cannot marry you. I couldn't, even if I loved you, and I don't think I do love you, though you fascinate me and, when we are dancing, I forget all the other things in you that I hate. I have been very foolish and maybe unkind to let it go on so far. I didn't quite know what I was doing. Girls don't know. That is why they play with men as they do. They don't mean to be cruel. They just don't know."

"But you know now, my Tony?" His dark, stormy face was very close to hers. Tony felt her heart leap but she did not flinch nor pull away this time.

"Yes, Alan, I know, in a way, at least. We mustn't go on like this. It is bad for us both. I'll tell Carlotta I am going home to-morrow."

"You want--to go away from me?" The haunting music of his voice, more moving in its hurt than in its mastery of mood, stirred Tony Holiday profoundly, but she steadied herself by a strong effort of will. She must not let him sweep her away from her moorings. She must not. She must remember Holiday Hill very hard.

"I have to, Alan," she said. "I am very sorry if I have hurt you, am hurting you. But I can't marry you. That is final. The sooner we end things the better."

"By G.o.d! It isn't final. It never will be so long as you and I are both alive. You will come to me of your own accord. You will love me. You do love me now. But you are letting the world come in between where it has no right to come. I tell you you are mine--mine!"

"No, no!" denied Tony.

"And I say yes, my love. You are my love. I have set my seal upon you.

You can go away, back to your Hill, but you will not be happy without me.

You will never forget me for a waking moment. You cannot. You are a part of me, forever."

There was something solemn, inexorable in Alan's tones. A strange fear clutched at Tony's heart. Was he right? Could she never forget him?

Would he always be a part of her--forever? No, that was nonsense! How could it be true? How could he have set his seal upon her when he had never even kissed her? She would not let him hypnotize her into believing his prophecy.

She stooped mechanically to pick up her roses and remembered the story of Persephone gathering lilies in the vale of Enna and suddenly borne off by the coal black horses of Dis to the dark kingdom of the lower world. Was she Persephone? Had she eaten of the pomegranate seeds while she danced night after night in Alan Ma.s.sey's arms? No, she would not believe it. She was free. She would exile Alan Ma.s.sey from her heart and life. She must.

This resolve was in her eyes as she lifted them to Alan's. The fire had died out of his now, and his face was gray and drawn in the sunshine. His mood had changed as his moods so often did swiftly.

"Forgive me, Tony," he said humbly. "I have troubled you, frightened you.

I am sorry. You needn't go away. I will go. I don't want to spoil one moment of happiness for you. I never shall, except when the devil is in me. Please try to remember that. Say always, 'Alan loves me. No matter what he does or says, he loves me. His love is real, if nothing else about him is.' You do believe that, don't you, dearest?" he pleaded.

"I do, Alan. I have always believed it, I think, ever since that first night, though I have tried not to. I am very sorry though. Love--your kind of love is a fearful thing. I am afraid of it."

"It is fearful, but beautiful too--very beautiful--like fire. Did you ever think what a strange dual element fire is? It consumes--is a force of destruction. But it also purifies, burns out dross. Love is like that, my Tony. Mine for you may d.a.m.n me forever, or it may take me to the very gate of Heaven. I don't know myself which it will be."

As he spoke there was a strange kind of illumination on his face, a look almost of spiritual exaltation. It awed Tony, bereft her of words. This was a new Alan Ma.s.sey--an Alan Ma.s.sey she had never seen before, and she found herself looking up instead of down at him.

He stooped and kissed her hand reverently, as a devotee might pay homage at the shrine of a saint.

"I shall not see you again until to-night, Tony. I am going into town.

But I shall be back--for one more dance with you, heart's dearest. And then I promise I will go away and leave you tomorrow. You will dance with me, Tony--once? We shall have that one perfect thing to remember?"

Tony bowed a.s.sent. And in a moment she was alone with her roses.

That afternoon she shut herself in her room to write letters to the home people whom she had neglected badly of late. Every moment had been so full since she had come to Carlotta's. There had been so little time to write and when she had written it had given little of what she was really living and feeling--just the mere externals and not all of them, as she was very well aware. They would never understand her relation with Alan.

They would disapprove, just as d.i.c.k had disapproved. Perhaps she did not understand, herself, why she had let herself get so deeply entangled in something which could not go on, something, which was the profoundest folly, if nothing worse.

The morning had crystallized her fear of the growing complication of the situation. She was glad Alan was going away, glad she had had the strength of will to deny him his will, glad that she could now--after to-night--come back into undisputed possession of the kingdom of herself.

But in her heart she was gladder that there was to-night and that one last dance with Alan Ma.s.sey before life became simple and sane and tame again, and Alan and his wild love pa.s.sed out of it forever.

She finished her letters, which were not very satisfactory after all.

How could one write real letters when one's pen was writing one thing and one's thoughts were darting hither and thither about very different business? She threw herself in the chaise longue, not yet ready to dress and go down to join the others. There was n.o.body there she cared to talk to, somehow. Alan was not there. n.o.body else mattered. It had come to that.

Idly she picked up a volume of verse that lay beside her on the table and fluttered its pages, seeking something to meet her restless mood.

Presently in her vagrant seeking she chanced upon a little poem--a poem she read and reread, twice, three times.

"For there is a flame that has blown too near, And there is a name that has grown too dear, And there is a fear.

And to the still hills and cool earth and far sky I make moan.

The heart in my bosom is not my own!

Oh, would I were free as the wind on wing!

Love is a terrible thing!"

Tony laid the book face down upon the table, still open at the little verse. The shadows were growing long out there in the dusk. The late afternoon sun was pale honey color. A soft little breeze stirred the branches of a weeping willow tree and set them to swaying languorously.

Unseen birds twittered happily among the shrubbery. A golden b.u.t.terfly poised for a moment above the white holly hocks and then drifted off over the flaming scarlet poppies and was lost to sight.

It was all so beautiful, so serene. She felt that it should have come like a benediction, cooling the fever of her tired mind, but it did not.

It could not even drive the words of the poem out of her head.

Oh, would I were free as the wind on wing!

Love is a terrible thing!

CHAPTER XIII

BITTER FRUIT

From the North Station in Boston Alan Ma.s.sey directed his course to a small cigar store on Atlantic Avenue. A black eyed Italian lad in attendance behind the counter looked up as he entered and surveyed him with grave scrutiny.

"I am Mr. Ma.s.sey," announced Alan. "Mr. Roberts is expecting me. I wired."

"Jim's sick," said the boy briefly.

"I am sorry. I hope he is not too sick to see me."

"Naw, he'll see you. He wants to." The speaker motioned Alan to follow him to the rear of the store. Together they mounted some narrow stairs, pa.s.sed through a hallway and into a bedroom, a disorderly, dingy, obviously man-kept affair. On the bed lay a large framed, exceedingly ugly looking man. His flesh was yellow and sagged loosely away from his big bones. The impression he gave was one of huge animal bulk, shriveling away in an unlovely manner, getting ready to disintegrate entirely. The man was sick undoubtedly. Possibly dying. He looked it.

The door shut with a soft click. The two men were alone.

"h.e.l.lo, Jim." Alan approached the bed. "Bad as this? I am sorry." He spoke with the careless, easy friendliness he could a.s.sume when it suited him.

The man grinned, faintly, ironically. The grin did not lessen the ugliness of his face, rather accentuated it.

"It's not so bad," he drawled. "Nothing but death and what's that? I don't suffer much--not now. It's cancer, keeps gnawing away like a rat in the wall. By and by it will get up to my heart and then it's good-by Jim.

I shan't care. What's life good for that a chap should cling to it like a barnacle on a rock?"