Madcap Part 14

He looked up at her in surprise. One of her hands was clenched on the bal.u.s.trade and her dark eyes regarded him scornfully.

"I've made you angry? I'm sorry," he said.

The tense lines of her figure suddenly relaxed as she leaned against the pergola and then laughed up at the sky.

"Would you preach to the stars, John Markham? They're a merry congregation. They're laughing at you--as I am. A sermon by moonlight with only the stars and a scoffer to listen!"

Her mockery astonished and bewildered him. His indictment of those with whom she affiliated was no new thing in their conversations, and he knew that what he had said was true.

"I'm sorry I spoke," he muttered.

She laughed at him again and threw out her arms toward the moonlit sea.

"What a night for the moralities--for the ashes of repentance! I ask a man into the rose-garden to make love to me and he preaches to me instead--_preaches to me_! of the world, the flesh and the devil, _par exemple_! Was ever a pretty woman in a more humiliating position!"

She approached him again and leaned over him, the strands of her hair brus.h.i.+ng his temples, her voice whispering mockingly just at his ear.

"Oh, la la! You make such a pretty lover, John. If I could only paint you in your sackcloth and ashes, I should die in content. What is it like, _mon ami_, to feel like moralizing in a rose-garden by moonlight? What do they tell you--the roses? Of the dull earth from which they come? Don't they whisper of the kisses of the night winds, of the drinking of the dew--of the mad joy of living--the sweetness of dying? Or don't they say anything to you at all--except that they are merely roses, John?"

She brushed the blossom in her fingers lightly across his lips and sprang away from him. But it was too late. She had gone too far and she realized it in a moment; for thought she eluded him once, he caught her in his arms and kissed her roughly on the lips.

"You'd mock at me, would you?" he cried.

She struggled in his arms and then lay inert. She deserved this revenge she knew, but not the carelessness of these kisses of retribution, each of them merciless with the burden of her awakening.

"Let me go, John," she said faintly. "You must not--"

"Not yet. I'm no man of stone. Can you scoff now?"

"No, no. Let me go. I've paid you well and you--O G.o.d! you've paid me, too. Let me go."

"Not until you kiss me."

"No--not that."

"Why?" he whispered.

"No--never that! Oh, the damage you have done!"

"I'll repair it--"

"No. You can't bring the dead to life----our friends.h.i.+p----it was so clean----Let me go, do you hear?"

But he only laughed at her.

"You'll kiss me--"

"Never!"

"You shall--"

"Never!"

He raised her face to his. She quivered under his touch, but her lips were insensate, and upon his hand a drop of moisture fell--a tear limpid, pure from the hidden springs of the spirit. He kissed its piteous course upon her cheek.

"Olga!" he whispered softly. "What have I done?"

"Killed something in me--I think--something gentle and n.o.ble that was trying so hard to live--"

"Forgive me," he stammered. "I didn't know you cared so much."

She started in his arms, then slowly released herself, and drew away while with an anxious gaze he followed her.

"Our friends.h.i.+p--I cared for that more than anything else in the world," she said simply.

"It shall be stronger," he began.

"No--friends.h.i.+p does not thrive on kisses."

"Love--" he began. But her quick gesture silenced him.

"Love, boy! What can you know of love!"

"Nothing. Teach me!"

She looked up into his face, her hands upon his shoulders holding him at arm's length, flushed with her empty victory--ice-cold with self contempt at the means she had used to accomplish it. Another man--a man of her own world--would have played the game as she had played it, mistrusting the tokens she had shown and taking her coquetry at its worldly value; would have kissed and perhaps forgotten the next morning. But as she looked in Markham's eyes she saw with dismay that he still read her heart correctly and that the pact of truthfulness which neither of them had broken was considered a pact between them still. Her gaze fell before his and she turned away, sure now that for the sake of her pride she must deceive him.

"No, I can teach you nothing, it seems, except, perhaps, that you should not make the arms of your lady black and blue. Love is a zephyr, _mon ami_, not a tornado."

He stared at her, bewildered by the sudden transformation.

"I--I kissed you," he said stupidly. "You wanted me to."

"Did I?" she taunted him. "Who knows? If I did"--examining her wrist--"I have now every reason to regret it."

He stood peering down at her from his great height, his thoughts tumbling into words.

"Don't lie to me, Olga. You were not content with friends.h.i.+p. No woman ever is. You wanted me to do--what I have done."

"Perhaps," she admitted calmly, "but not the way you did it. Kissing should be done upon the soft pedal _mon ami, adagio, con amore_. Your technique is rusty. Is it a wonder that I am disappointed?"

She was mocking him again, but this time he was not deceived.

"Perhaps I will improve with practice," he muttered.

He would have seized her again but she eluded him, laughing.

"Thank you, no--" she cried.