XIX

"There can be no possible doubt," Louise remarked, as she unfolded her napkin, "as to our first subject of conversation. Both Sophy and I are simply dying of curiosity to know about the prince's supper party."

"It was very cheerful and very gay," John said. "Every one seemed to enjoy it very much."

"Oh, la, la!" Sophy exclaimed. "Is that all you have to tell us? I shall begin to think that you were up to mischief there."

"I believe," Louise declared, "that every one of the guests is sworn to secrecy as to what really goes on."

"I can assure you that I wasn't," John told them.

"The papers hint at all sorts of things," Sophy continued. "Every one who writes for the penny illustrated papers parades his whole stock of classical knowledge when he attempts to describe them. We read of the feasts of Lucullus and Bacchanalian orgies. They say that at supper-time you lie about on sofas and feast for four hours at a stretch."

"The reports seem exaggerated," John laughed. "We went in to supper at half past twelve and we came out just before two. We sat on chairs, and the conversation was quite decorous."

"This is most disappointing!" Louise murmured. "I cannot think why the prince never invites us."

"The ladies of his family were not present," John remarked stiffly.

There was a moment's silence. Louise had looked down at her plate, and Sophy glanced out of the window.

"Is it true that Calavera was there?" the latter asked presently.

"Yes, she was there," John replied. "She danced after supper."

"Oh, you lucky man!" Louise sighed. "She only dances once or twice a year off the stage. Is she really so wonderful close to?"

"She is, in her way, very wonderful," John agreed.

"Confess that you admired her," Louise persisted.

"I thought her dancing extraordinary," he confessed, "and, to be truthful, I did admire her. All the same, hers is a hateful gift."

Louise looked at him curiously for a moment. His face showed few signs of the struggle through which he had passed, but the grim setting of his lips reminded her a little of his brother. He had lost, too, something of the boyishness, the simple light-heartedness of the day before. Instinctively she felt that the battle had begun. She asked him no more about the supper party, and Sophy, quick to follow her lead, also dropped the subject.

Luncheon was not a lengthy meal, and immediately its service was concluded, Sophy rose to her feet with a sigh.

"I must go and finish my work," she declared. "Let me have the den to myself for at least an hour, please, Louise. It will take me longer than that to muddle through your books."

Louise nodded and rose to her feet.

"We will leave you entirely undisturbed," she promised. "I hope, when you have finished, you will have something more agreeable to say than you had before lunch. Shall we have our coffee up-stairs?" she suggested, turning to John.

"I should like to very much," he replied. "I want to talk to you alone."

She led the way up-stairs into the cool, white drawing-room, with its flower-perfumed atmosphere and its delicate, shadowy air of repose. She curled herself up in a corner of the divan and gave him his coffee. Then she leaned back and looked at him.

"So you have really come to London, Mr. Countryman!"

"I have followed you," he answered. "I think you knew that I would. I tried not to," he went on, after a moment's pause. "I fought against it as hard as I could; but in the end I had to give in."

"That was very sensible of you," she declared knocking the ash from her cigarette. "There is no use wearing oneself out fighting a hopeless battle. You know now that there are things in life which are not to be found in your passionless corner among the hills. You have realized that you owe a duty to yourself."

"That was not what brought me," he answered bluntly. "I came for you."

Louise's capacity for fencing seemed suddenly enfeebled. A frontal attack of such directness was irresistible.

"For me!" she repeated weakly.

"Of course," he replied. "None of your arguments would have brought me here. If I have desired to understand this world at all, it is because it is your world. It is you I want—don't you understand that? I thought you would know it from the first moment you saw me!"

He was suddenly on his feet, leaning over her, a changed man, masterful, passionate. She opened her lips, but said nothing. She felt herself lifted up, clasped for a moment in his arms. Unresisting, she felt the fire of his kisses. The world seemed to have stopped. Then she tried to push him away, weakly, and against her own will. At her first movement he laid her tenderly back in her place.

"I am sorry!" he said. "And yet I am not," he added, drawing his chair close up to her side. "I am glad! You knew that I loved you, Louise. You knew that it was for you I had come."

She was beginning to collect herself. Her brain was at work again; but she was conscious of a new confusion in her senses, a new element in her life. She was no longer sure of herself.

"Listen," she begged earnestly. "Be reasonable! How could I marry you? Do you think that I could live with you up there in the hills?"

"We will live," he promised, "anywhere you choose in the world."

"Ah, no!" she continued, patting his hand. "You know what your life is, the things you want in life. You don't know mine yet. There is my work. You cannot think how wonderful it is to me. You don't know the things that fill my brain from day to day, the thoughts that direct my life. I cannot marry you just because—because—"

"Because what?" he interrupted eagerly.

"Because you make me feel—something I don't understand, because you come and you turn the world, for a few minutes, topsyturvy. But that is all foolishness, isn't it? Life isn't built up of emotions. What I want you to understand, and what you, please, must understand, is that at present our lives are so far, so very far, apart. I do not feel I could be happy leading yours, and you do not understand mine."

"I have come to find out about yours," John explained. "That is why I am here. Perhaps I ought to have waited a little time before I spoke to you as I did just now. Come, you can forget what I have said and done; but to me it will be an everlasting joy. I shall treasure the memory of it. It will help me—I can't tell you quite in what way it will help me. But for the rest, I will serve my apprenticeship. I will try to get into sympathy with the things that please you. It will not take me long. As soon as you feel that we are drawing closer together, I will ask you again what I have asked you this afternoon. In the meantime, I may be your friend, may I not? You will let me see a great deal of you? You will help me just a little?"

Louise leaned back in her chair. She had been carried off her feet, brought face to face with emotions which she dared not analyze. Perhaps, after all her self-dissection, there were still secret chambers. She thought almost with fear of what they might contain. Her sense of superiority was vanishing. She was, after all, like other women.

"Yes," she promised, "I will help. We will leave it at that. Some day you shall talk to me again, if you like. In the meantime, remember we are both free. You have not known many women, and you may change your mind when you have been longer in London. Perhaps it will be better for you if you do!"

"That is quite impossible," John said firmly. "You see," he went on, looking at her with shining eyes, "I know now what I half believed from the first moment that I saw you. I love you!"

Springing restlessly to her feet, she walked across the room and back again. Action of some sort seemed imperative. A curious hypnotic feeling seemed to be dulling all her powers of resistance. She looked into her life and she was terrified. Everything had grown insignificant. It couldn't really be possible that with her brains, her experience, this man who had dwelt all his life in the simple ways had yet the power to show her the path toward the greater things!

Through the complex web of emotions which made up her temperament there suddenly sprang a primitive instinct, the primitive instinct of all women, rebelling against the first touch of a master's hand. Was she to find herself wrong and this man right? Was she to submit, to accept from his hand the best gifts of life—she who had looked for them in such very high, such very inaccessible places?

She felt like a child again. She trembled a little as she sat down by his side. It was not in this fashion that she had intended to hear what he had to say.

"I don't know what is the matter with me to-day," she murmured distractedly. "I think I must send you away. You disturb my thoughts. I can't see life clearly. Don't hope for too much from me," she begged. "But don't go away," she added, with a sudden irresistible impulse of anxiety. "Oh, I wish—I wish you understood me and everything about me, without my having to say a word!"

"I feel what you are," he answered, "and that is sufficient."

Once more she rose to her feet and walked across to the window. An automobile had stopped in the street below. She looked down upon it with a sudden frozen feeling of apprehension.

John moved to her side, and for him, too, the joy of those few moments was clouded. A little shiver of presentiment took its place. He recognized the footman whom he saw standing upon the pavement.

"It is the Prince of Seyre," Louise faltered.

"Must you see him?" John muttered.

"Yes!"

"Send him away," John begged. "We haven't finished yet. I won't say anything more to upset you. What I want now is some practical guidance."

"I cannot send him away!"

John glanced toward her and hated himself for his fierce jealousy. She was looking very white and very pathetic. The light had gone from her eyes. He felt suddenly dominant, and, with that feeling, there came all the generosity of the conqueror.

"Good-by!" he said. "Perhaps I can see you some time to-morrow."

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers, one by one. Then he left the room. She listened to his footsteps descending the stairs, firm, resolute, deliberate. They paused, there was a sound of voices—the prince and he were exchanging greetings; then she heard other footsteps ascending, lighter, smoother, yet just as deliberate.

Her face grew paler as she listened. There was something which sounded to her almost like the beating of fate in the slow, inevitable approach of this unseen visitor.