Burning Sands Part 34

he answered.

He put his hand upon hers as it rested on her knee, and drew her towards him; but she resisted the movement, and he noticed that her fingers, which pushed his own away, were cold.

"Tell me," he said. "What has been the matter? You have made me very unhappy."

"There's nothing to tell," she answered. "Only ..."

"Only what?"

"I don't think you know what love is," she murmured, and her voice was so low that her words were almost lost in the darkness.

"But that is just what I was going to say to you," he replied.

She uttered a little laugh. "It seems that we shall always interpret things differently," she said.

She turned to him, and in the obscurity his face seemed strange to her.

She could not construct the features, nor supply the well-known lines now lost in the shadow. She saw only the great forehead, faintly white, and the upper part of his cheeks; but his eyes were hidden in two deep cavities of blackness, and all expression was extinguished.

"There will always be these misunderstandings," he told her, "so long as you are tied to this sort of social life."

"I prefer it to the underworld," she answered, and her heart beat, for she was launching her attack.

"What d'you mean by the 'underworld'?" he asked.

"The world that Lizette belongs to," she replied.

She had said it!-she had hurled her lightning, and now she waited for the roll of the thunder. But there was no cracking of the heavens: only silence; and, as she waited, she could feel the beating of her pulse in her throat.

At last he spoke, and his voice was quiet and clear.

"Please tell me exactly what Cousin Charles has said about Lizette."

She turned quickly on him. "Why should you think it was Charles Barthampton who told me?"

"Because I was with Lizette the day I first met him," he answered.

"Then you don't deny it?"

"Deny it?" he repeated, with scorn in his voice. "Why on earth should I deny it?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "A man generally denies that sort of thing to the girl he wants to marry," she said.

"That only shows how little you understand me," he replied, and there was despair in his words.

"O, I understand you well enough," she answered, bitterly. "You are just like all men. But what I can't understand is how you could be going about with that woman at the same time that you were making love to me."

Again he was silent. It seemed that he had to turn her words over in his mind before their significance was clear.

"You mean," he said at length, "that if I had told you Lizette was an old flame of mine now set aside, you would have condoned it?"

"Women have to forgive a great deal in the men they love," she answered.

"You mean," he went on, ruthlessly, "that you think me capable of coming to you with that woman's kisses on my lips?"

It was she, now, who was silent for a while. "I've got to think you capable of it," she said at last. "You were with her only a few days ago."

"Yes," he answered. "I was with her, as you say, a few days ago. Well?"

She moved restlessly in her seat. "That's not the way to ask my forgiveness," she said.

Suddenly his shadowy bulk seemed to loom up above her. He gripped her wrist with his left hand, and drew her towards him; while the fingers of his right hand laid themselves upon her throat. His face came close to hers.

"How dare you!" he whispered. "How dare you think of me like that? D'you mean to say that if all this were true, if I were living with that woman, you would be prepared to forgive me?"

She did not speak. "Answer me!" he cried, and his arms crushed her to him.

"I don't know," she gasped. "I only know I love you, Daniel."

He loosed his hold upon her. "Oh, you're tainted," he exclaimed.

"Intrigues, jealousies, deceptions, quarrels, reconciliations-they're all part of your scheme of life. I suppose you revel in them, just as you revel in the latest divorce case at your gossiping tea-parties, and the latest dresses from Paris, and the latest dancing craze, and the latest thing in erotic pictures or sensuous music...."

Muriel put her hands over her ears. "I won't listen!" she cried. "You don't know what you're saying."

He stood in front of her, his hands driven into the pockets of his coat.

His ma.s.sive head and shoulders shut out the misty stars, and as she looked up at him he appeared to her as a black and vaporous elemental risen from the ancient soil of Egypt.

It was evident that he was trying to control his anger; and when he spoke again his voice was quiet and restrained.

"I'm afraid I must seem to you very rude," he said, "but when one is speaking out of the pit of despair the words one utters are black words.

These last few days I've been seeing you with critical eyes: watching you, listening to you. And the result is ..."

"What?" she asked, as he paused.

"I realize more and more how I dislike all this fooling with the surface of things-surface emotions, surface wit, surface honesty. I can't get down to the real You: the veneer is so thick. All that I have seen and heard belongs to the superficial. I'm beginning to think there's nothing real or solid under it all. The things you say are clever empty things; the things you do...."

She rose to her feet and faced him-a shadow confronting a shadow.

"We seem to be getting further away all the time from the original point of contention," she said, her voice rising. "I suppose that is what is called 'confusing the issue.' It is rather clever. But please try to remember that I am accusing you of deceit and disgusting duplicity. I am accusing you of being with a woman whom even your obnoxious cousin couldn't stand seeing you with, so that he had to try to separate you."

"Oh, he said that, did he?" Daniel's tone was apathetic.

"Do you deny it?" she asked, quickly.

"No," he answered. "If you believe the story, it has served its purpose."

"How can I not believe it?" she cried. "You don't deny it."

"Why should I deny it?" he demanded. "It is not a compromise with you I am looking for: I am looking for your trust."