Part 75

"That's what I wanted," he went on. "Now I can say what I have to say."

She sat still, waiting to hear him. There was now no sign of uneasiness about her. She smiled luxuriously, and her eyes were resting on his face with evident pleasure. They were together again as they had been in the Long Gallery; the same contentment possessed her. The inner feeling had its outward effect. There came on him the same admiration, the same sense that she commanded his loyalty. When she had come to his rooms that afternoon he had found it easy to rebuke and to rule her. His intent for the evening had been the same; he had sought to bring her to a more friendly mind chiefly that she might accept with greater readiness the chastening of cool common-sense, and a rebuke from the decent pride which her proposal had outraged. Harry was amazed to find himself suddenly at a loss, looking at the girl, hardly knowing how to speak to her.

"Well?" she said. Where now was the tremulous excitement? She was magnificently at her ease and commanded him to speak, if he had anything to say. If not, let him hold his peace.

But he was proud and obstinate too. They came to a conflict there in the little room--the forgotten cab waiting outside, the forgotten Mina beginning to stir in her bed as voices dimly reached her ears and she awoke to the question--where was Cecily?

"If we're to be friends," Harry began, "I must hear no more of what you said this afternoon. You asked me to be a pensioner, you proposed yourself to be----"

He did not finish. The word was not handy, or he wished to spare her.

She showed no signs of receiving mercy.

"Very well," she said, smiling. "If you knew everything, you wouldn't talk like that. I suppose you've no idea what it cost me?"

"What it cost you?"

She broke into a scornful laugh. "You know what it really meant. Still you've only a scolding for me! How funny that you see one half and not the other! But you've given me a very pleasant evening, Cousin Harry."

"You must leave my life alone," he insisted brusquely.

"Oh, yes, for the future. I've nothing left to offer, have I? I have been--refused!" She seemed to exult in the abandonment of her candor.

He looked at her angrily, almost dangerously. For a passing moment she had a sensation of that physical fear from which no moral courage can wholly redeem the weak in body. But she showed none of it; her pose was unchanged; only the hand on which her head rested shook a little. And she began to laugh. "You look as if you were going to hit me," she said.

"Oh, you do talk nonsense!" he groaned. But she was too much for him; he laughed too. She had spoken with such a grand security. "If you tell me to walk out of the door I shall go."

"Well, in five minutes. It's very late."

"Oh, we weren't bred in Bayswater," he reminded her.

"I was--in Chelsea."

"So you say. I think in heaven--no, Olympus--really."

"Have you said what you wanted to say, Cousin Harry?"

"I suppose you hadn't the least idea what you were doing?"

"I was as cool as you were when you gave me Blent."

"You're cool enough now, anyhow," he admitted, in admiration of her parry.

"Quite, thanks." The hand behind her head trembled sorely. His eyes were on her, and a confusion threatened to overwhelm the composure of which she boasted.

"I gave you Blent because it was yours."

"What I offered you is mine."

"By God, no. Never yours to give till you've lost it!"

With an effort she kept her pose. His words hummed through her head.

"Did you say that to Janie Iver?" she mustered coolness to ask him mockingly.