Running Sands Part 17

She saw now.

"How can I help?" she faltered.

"I wanted Life," he repeated, and wished that he could see her face.

"Life means more than money. Money will protect it, secure it; but Life means Love. Long ago I knew your mother."

Very simply, but directly, he told her how he had loved that other Muriel. His morbid fears he did not describe, but his first romance he sketched with a gentleness that, while she, her heart steadied, looked up at his reposed strength and remembered all the stories that she had heard of his adventurous career, brought a quick mist of tears to her eyes.

"Do you remember," he asked, when his story was finished, "how rudely I looked at you when I first saw you in the Metropolitan Opera House?"

"It wasn't rude," she said.

"You must have thought it so then."

"I--I didn't know what to think--exactly."

"Well, now you know. It was an astonis.h.i.+ng resemblance that made me stare at you."

Her nether lip trembled.

"I didn't know my mother," she said.

"No," said Stainton, "but you are very like her." He waited a moment and then, as her eyes were lowered, went on: "That was a boyish love of mine for her. It was really not love at all--only the rough sketch for what might have been, but never was, a finished picture. But I went away, when your mother repulsed me, with the likeness of her in my heart. I wanted love; I worked to be fit to win love and to keep it once I had won it. Then I came back and saw in that box at the opera the living original of the dream-woman that had all those years been with me."

He came another step nearer.

"I arranged to meet you," he said, "and I knew at last I was really in love. I want to be to you what your mother would not let me be to her.

It is you whom I love, not a memory. I love you. I was young then and didn't know. Now I am still young--I have kept myself young--but I _know_." He bent forward and paused. Then, "Muriel," he said.

The girl drew back. She put her hand before her eyes. The violets rolled to the floor.

"I--I can't tell," she stammered. "I didn't expect--I never thought----"

Even this Stainton had foreseen.

"Then don't hurry now," he said. He drew a chair beside her and quietly took her free hand. "Take your time. Take a week, two weeks, a month, if you choose."

"But it's so new; it's all so new," said Muriel. "I never suspected----Oh, I know girls are always supposed to guess; but really, really, I never, _never_----"

There was genuine pain in her voice.

"I don't know what is expected of most girls," said Stainton; "but of you I shall never expect anything but the truth."

She looked up at him with eyes perplexed.

"Yes--yes, that is just what I want to be: honest. And--don't you see?--that is just why--I am so uncertain--that is just why I can't, right away, tell you----"

He pressed her hand and rose. He did not like to hurt her.

"I ask only that you will think it over," he said. "Will you think it over, Muriel?"

She bowed her head.

"Yes," said she.

"And I may come back in----"

"Yes."

"In two weeks?"

"In two weeks." Her voice was low and shaken. "Oh, you don't mind if I ask you to go now?" she pleaded.

"I understand," said Stainton. "I'll be back two weeks from this evening. Good-night."

"Good-night, Mr. Stainton," said Muriel.

She waited for him to go. She waited until she heard the street door close behind him. Then she hurried in retreat toward her own room.

But Mrs. Newberry was lying in ambush on the landing when the girl came upstairs--Mrs. Newberry, broad in white satin, with diamonds at her neck and in her hair.

"Well?" asked the aunt.

"Oh!" cried Muriel. She started. "Aunt Ethel!"

"Well?"

"You frightened me," Muriel explained. "I didn't see you until you spoke."

"Well?" persisted Mrs. Newberry.

"Nothing. That's all," said Muriel. "Nothing--only that----"

Ethel became diplomatic:

"Mr. Stainton didn't stay very long?"

"Not very long, Aunty."

Ethel heard something ominous in her niece's tone.

"You didn't--you don't mean to say you sent him _away_?"

"No, Aunty. Good-night."

"It's early. You're going to bed so early?"

"Yes, I think I'll go to bed. I'm--I'm tired."