Red Masquerade Part 6

"But I shall."

Aghast, she protested: "You can't mean that!"

"Why not? The world shall know your true reason for leaving me--that you were the mistress of another man--and who that man was!"

Staring, she uttered in a low voice: "Never!"

"Or," he amended, deliberately, "you may keep them, burn them, do what you will with them--on fair terms--_my_ terms."

She said nothing, but her dilate eyes held fixedly to his. He moved a pace or two nearer, his voice dropped to a lower key, the light she had learned to loathe flickered in the depths of his eyes.

"Come back to me, Sofia! I can't live without you ..."

Her lips moved to deny him, but made no sound. Now it was revealed to her, the way.

"Come back to me, Sofia!"

His hand crept along the edge of the table and lifted, quivering, to capture hers. She steeled herself to endure its touch, against sickening repulsion she fought to achieve a smile that would carry a suggestion of at least forgetfulness.

"And if I do--?" she murmured.

He gave a violent start, blood suffused his face darkly, his arms leapt out to enfold her. She stepped back, evading him with a movement of coquetry that served, as it was intended, to inflame him the more.

"Wait!" she insisted. "Answer me first: If I return to you--then what?"

"Everything shall be as you wish--everything forgotten--I will think of nothing but how to make you happy--"

"And I may have my letters?"

He nodded, swallowing hard, as if the concession well-nigh choked him.

Under his gloating gaze her flesh crawled. Only by supreme effort did she succeed in resisting a mad impulse to risk a rush for door or windows, and whipped her will into maintaining what seemed to be frank response.

"Very well," she said; "I agree."

Again he offered to touch her, again she moved slightly, eluding him.

"No," she stipulated with an arch glance--"not yet! First prove you mean to make good your word."

"How?"

"Let me go--with my letters--and call on me to-morrow."

His look clouded. "Can I trust you?" He was putting the question to himself more than to her. "Dare I?" He added in a tone colourless and flat: "I've half a mind to take you at your word. Only--forgive my doubts--appearances are against you--you seem almost too keen for the bargain. How can I know--?"

"What proof do you want?"

"Something definite.... You pledge yourself to me?" A movement of her head a.s.sented. "You will give yourself back to me?" He came nearer, but she contrived to repeat the sign of a.s.sent. "Wholly, without reserve?"

An invincible disgust shook her as the full sense of his insistence struck home. Still she whipped herself to play out the scene--and win!

"As you say, Victor, as you will...."

He moved still nearer. She became conscious of his nearness as if a palpable aura of vileness emanated from his person.

"Then give me proof--here and now."

"How?"

He laughed a throaty, evil laugh. "Need you ask? Not much, my Sofia ...

only a little ... something on account..." Suddenly she could no more: memories unspeakable rose like disturbed dregs to the surface of her consciousness. Involuntarily, not knowing what she did, she flung out an arm and struck down his hands.

"You--leper!"

The epithet was like a knout cutting through the decayed fibre of the man and raising a livid welt on his diseased soul. Galled beyond endurance, his countenance convulsed with fury, he struck wickedly; and the vicious blow of his open palm across her mouth brought flecks of blood to the lips as her teeth cut into the tender flesh.

It did far more, it shattered at one stroke the brittle casing of self-command with which centuries of civilization had sought to veneer the Slav. In a trice a woman whose existence neither of them had suspected was revealed, a fury incarnate flew at the dismayed prince, clawing, tearing, raining blows upon his face and bosom. Overcome by surprise, blinded, dazed, staggered, he gave ground, stumbled, caught at a chair to steady himself.

As abruptly as it had begun, the a.s.sault ceased. Panting and frantic, the girl fell back, paused, renewed her grasp upon herself, gazed momentarily in contempt on that dashed and quaking figure, then swiftly swooped down to retrieve the picture, and madly pelted toward the door.

In an instant, Victor was after her. His clutching fingers barely missed her shoulder but caught a flying end of the veil that swathed her throat and head. With finger-tips touching the door-k.n.o.b Sofia was checked and twitched back so violently that she was all but thrown off her feet.

She tried desperately to regain her balance, but the pressure round her throat, tightening, bade fair to suffocate her; and reeling, while her hands tore ineffectually at the folds of the veil, she was drawn back and back, and tripped, falling half on, half off the table.

Already her vision was darkening, her lungs were labouring painfully, her head throbbed with the revolt of strangulated arteries as if sledge hammers were seeking to smash through her skull.

Through closing shadows she saw that savage mask which hovered over her, moping and mowing, as Victor twisted and drew ever more tight the murderous bindings round her throat.

A groping hand encountered something on the table, a lump of metal, cold and heavy. She seized and dashed it brutally into that hateful face, saw his head jerk back and heard him grunt with pain, and struck again, blindly, with all her might.

Instantly the pressure upon her throat was eased. She heard a groan, a fall ...

VIII

GREEK VS. GREEK

She found herself standing, partly resting upon the table. Great, tearing sobs racked her slight young body--but at least she was breathing, there was no more constriction of her windpipe; Her head still ached, however, her neck felt stiff and sore, and she remained somewhat giddy and confused.

She eyed rather wildly her hands. One held torn and ragged folds of the veil ripped from her throat, the other the weapon with which she had cheated death: a bronze paperweight, probably a miniature copy of a Barye, an elephant trumpeting. The up-flung trunk was darkly stained and sticky....

With a shudder she dropped the bronze, and looked down. Victor lay at her feet, supine, grotesquely asprawl. His face was bruised and livid; the cheek laid open by the bronze was smeared with scarlet, accentuating the leaden colour of his skin. His mouth was ajar; his eyes, half closed, hideously revealed slender slits of white. More blood discoloured his right temple, welling from under the matted, coa.r.s.e black hair.

He was terribly motionless. If he breathed, Sofia could detect no sign of it.

In panic she knelt beside the body, threw back Victor's dinner-coat, and laid an ear above his heart.