Chapter XXXVI: In the Dark

She heard the breathing of one who has ridden hard and far, and right through her there shuddered a thrill so exquisite that for a moment she could not move. She was on the point of springing up, flinging herself into those unseen arms, when she heard his voice, low and mocking.

"You little wretch--you treacherous minx! Don't you think you are the limit?"

As in the mile-castle, she had but the time it took him to deliver himself of this courteous address in which to meet the challenge. She did it, however. If she died for it he should not know that she had been sitting there crying for the moon until her eyes were all swelled and her "hanshif" drenched.

"You must have left your dinner engagement very early, Mr. Guyse. It is barely ten o'clock. However, as I have been travelling all day I am very tired, and I will ask you to excuse me."

"You may ask, but you won't get excused," he said rapidly. "What the dickens are you sitting in the dark for? I want to see your wicked face--to see the conscious guilt steal over it! How dare you? Oh, how _dare_ you insult me as you have insulted me to-day?" With a sudden change of tone he added, after a moment's breathless silence: "How could you plan such a fiendish vengeance?"

"Vengeance! How fatiguing you are!" said she languidly. "What vengeance should I want? I am giving you what you love most in the world. You always have wanted it--don't deny it! You would even almost, have married me in order to secure it! Only I bored you so utterly! However, if you are talking about insults, I don't think I can beat the one you have offered me. You couldn't bring yourself to marry me, but you can bring yourself to marry a poll parrot like that Kendall thing! Oh, _do_ go away; I wonder I have the patience to talk to you at all!"

"I wonder I have the patience not to shake you! ... Do you happen to know where there are some matches?"

"I'll call Deb and ask for some." ...

She rose from the depths of the chair, and found her hands held.

"Why, you're as cold as a stone! Sitting alone in the dark and the cold--you're actually shivering----"

"That's with rage, not cold. Good night, Mr. Guyse. Sorry I can't stop and talk to you, but you pay your calls at unseemly hours."

"Olwen!" It seemed he was in earnest at last. He had never before called her by her name. "Could you really be so stupid, so utterly unlike yourself, as to imagine that I should accept that deed of gift?"

She gave a little low chuckle. "You can't help accepting it, silly."

"Haven't you got the sense to see that it must be all or nothing between me and you?"

"Well, the choice lies with you, I suppose."

"You suppose nothing of the kind," he cried in exasperation. "You know that all is out of the question, so it must be nothing from you to me--Miss Innes!"

He was so near her that the warmth and energy of him seemed to enfold her. His breath still came fast--and no wonder. The distance between Caryngston and the Pele, though easy in a motor, was a long, hard ride. She knew that he could not have been at the Kendalls at all. She felt that he was within an ace of sheer explosion, yet still he resisted. Would _nothing_ break down his pride?

"Nin"--she threw all the appeal she could into her voice--"Nin, what do you mean? Why do you say that it is out of the question for me to give you--all?"

"Because you don't love me."

"Indeed? And what about you? You don't love me, either."

He gave a rough sort of laugh as if of utter scorn. "You unprincipled woman! Here, I have had enough of this bo-peep, I am going to make a light."

He let go her hands to feel in his pocket for matches; and instantly she made a dart to get past him. He gave an exclamation.

"No, you don't!" dropped the match-box and caught her as she fled--caught her in both arms, held her a breathless moment in silence, breathing hard. Then, with a muttered ejaculation which sounded like "That's done it!" he bent his head down to where he supposed the top of her head to be. She had flung back her throat, and instead of the hair he meant to kiss, he found her lips....

* * * * *

"Well, it's your fault. You shouldn't have said I didn't love you! Such an obvious lie, now wasn't it?"

The dark still enfolded them. She lay in his arms; but she could not answer. Life had gone past speech.

"What is it?" he whispered. "Are you angry? Have I hurt you?"

He had to bend very close to catch what she said:

"At last!"

"At last!" he echoed; "but girls are the very queerest! Why on earth, if you felt like this, did you treat me in the old days as though you wouldn't have anything to do with me?"

"Oh, Nin, it would take such ages to explain. I--I couldn't even begin yet. I'm--I'm too completely muddled.... Hadn't you better put me down now?"

His hold did not slacken. "You are such a will-o'-the-wisp that I dread letting you go, in case you slip away into the dark, as you used to do when I dreamed of you at Griesslauen. Let me sit in the big chair and hold you as I did in the mile-castle--my little white-crane lady!" His odd voice held the tenderest, shyest note--both tones so new to her that they caused delicious shivers to pass through her, as if at a caressing touch. He sat down as he had suggested, cradling her head against him, and added with a choky laugh, "Gad, perhaps it's as well it happened in the dark, so that you could forget the kind of scarecrow I have turned into. You saw to-day, though, up on the moor. You once told me that I looked like a demon. An elderly demon isn't at all a charming sight, I should suppose."

She slipped an arm about his neck. "You have altered, I won't deny it. But you are going to get back all your looks. Wait till you have had a six months' honeymoon! Even Sunia won't know you at the end!" And there her control gave way and she began to sob. "When I think--when I think--what you have gone through----"

"It was bad. But it's over. Yes, it was pretty bad. We won't talk of it now. You see, I was only a private. I went and enlisted in the Gordons because I had no previous military experience. There wasn't a hope of my getting a commission; and I wanted to get out there quick. So I did; I was out of England into France, and out of France into Germany before you could say 'Knife.' ... Well, if Germany is going to receive retribution at the hands of Providence for all her misdeeds, it's likely to be a good while before she's through."

"You are not to think of such things now, but to listen to me. There is one thing I simply must know. When you looked up to-day and saw me standing there in the mile-castle, what did you think? Now don't tease, boy, tell me really."

"I would if I could, but I can't. I felt as if I couldn't feel anything. The only idea left was a determination to keep my end up."

"And I was just as determined to break you down."

"Much you know about it! Break me down with your flippant Leap-Year proposals, which merely shocked me! ... That was what made me run over my whole list of ammunition and hit upon Rose Kendall!"

"Nin!" Two hands, which small though they may have been were still decidedly vigorous, went round his throat. "Were you having me on? Tell the truth now!"

"I can't, if you choke me! Well, yes and no. I was and I wasn't. It is not true that I am engaged to her, but they have been letting me see that they would be pleased enough if it came about. I was thinking that by going there this evening I was perhaps committing myself. Anyway, I thought it just possible that if I threw that stone it might hit you and hurt you, and I wanted to hurt you as much as I possibly could, because I knew I could never ask you, and you had shown such incredible effrontery in asking me! You really did deserve----"

"But, Nin, you are a perfect owl! If you thought I should mind being told you were engaged to the poll-parrot, how can you say you thought I didn't care for you?"

"Oh, I don't know! Weren't you sticking pins into me all over?"

She laid her cheek close against his. "Effrontery!" she echoed, with a gleeful chuckle. "Yes, I was rather outrageous, wasn't I? Your prunes-prism school-marm asking you right out to marry her! But, you see, you had given yourself away completely. I saw you some minutes before you knew I was there ... _and I saw what you had in your hand_."

She boldly plunged her hand into his coat pocket, but found nothing.

He laughed. "Not there, not there, my child. I can't show it you without pulling off my coat and rolling up my sleeve. I've got a 'bracelet of bright hair about the bone' like the chap in Donne's verses ... it went to Griesslauen with me.... Kiddie, this is too good to be true. How nice and soft your cheek is against mine! Just like a peach. Does mine feel scratchy? Bum, isn't it, that it should be such bliss to rub them against each other! Oh, Jove! Here's Mother Deb!"

They had but a moment to regain their feet before the sleepy landlady was upon them, bearing a candle in her hand.

"All in the dark! Then he must have gone," she began, and broke off to continue, in a shocked voice, "Muster Nin, it's time you was a-going."

"You'll have to put me up here tonight, Deb, and to-morrow, yoong lass'll be away oop to t' Pele with me. We're going to get wed, yoong lass and me! What d'you think o' that?"