"Yes."They danced, marched, countermarched, pirouetted, in a pink mist. And he told her in his courtly way, with his Southern fervor, how he had been captivated by the white plume, and the shoulder and arm, and the foot; how vainly he had tried to overtake her for at least a fleeting survey. He told her how keen his dismay was when she escaped him and fled north. He told her how he made a note
of the number of her car. He did not tell her that he forgot it, and he did not dare to tell her that he was jealous of the unknown to whom she had hastened.
Persis could not but be pleased, though she tried to disguise her delight by saying:
"It must have been a shock to you when you saw what was really under this hat."
40
She had not meant to fish so outrageously for a compliment. She understood, too late, that her words gave him not only an excuse,
but a compulsion to praise. Praise was not withheld.
"If you could only know how I--how you--how beautiful you--how--I wish you'd let me say it!"
"You've said it," she murmured. His confusion revealed an ardor too profound to be rebuked or resisted. She luxuriated in it, and
rather sighed than smiled:
"I'm glad you like me."
It was a more girlish speech than she usually made. Unwittingly she crept a trifle closer to him, and breathed so deeply that he felt her bosom swell against him with a strangely gentle power. By immeasurably subtle degrees the barrier between them dissolved, or rather shifted until[Pg 91] it surrounded them. They were no longer strangers. They were together within a magic inclosure.
He understood the new communion, and an impulse swept him to crush her against him. He fought it so hard that his arm quivered. She felt the battle in his muscles, and rejoiced in the duel of his two selves, both hers. She knew that she had a lover as well as a guardian in his heart.
She looked up to see what manner of man this was who had won so close to her soul in so brief a time. He looked down to see who she really was. Their eyes met and held, longer than ever before, met studiously and hospitably, as the eyes of two lonesome children that have become neighbors meet across a fence.
What she saw in his gaze gave a little added crimson to her cheeks. And then the music flared up with a fierce ecstasy that penetrated even their aloofness. He caught her close and spun with her in a frenzied rapture round and round. He shunted other dancers aside and did not know it. He was glared at, rebuked, and did not know it. The impetus of the whirl compelled a tighter, tighter clutch. Their hands gripped faster. He forgot everything in the mystic pursuit and surrender of the dance, the union and disunion of their bodies--her little feet companioning his, the satin and steel of her tense sinews, the tender duality of her breast against the rock of his, the flutter of her quick, warm breath on his throat, the sorcery of her half-averted eyes tempting his lips almost unbearably.
The light burned about them like a flaming rose. The other couples had paused and retreated, staring at them; but they did not heed their isolation. They swooped and careened and twirled till they were blurred like a spinning top, till they were exhausted and wavering in their flight.
At length he found that she was breathless, pale, squandered. She hung all her weight on his arm, and grew so heavy that it ached.[Pg
92]
And now, when he looked down at her, he saw that the operator had inadvertently put upon them the green light. In Forbes' eyes it had a sickly, cadaverous glimmer as of death and dissolution. He did not know that she was about to swoon; but she was so gray and lifeless that he was frightened. In the green, clammy radiance she looked as if she had been buried and brought back to the daylight. She was horribly beautiful.
Just in time the music came to an abrupt end, and the danse macabre was done. But the floor still wheeled beneath his feet, and he
staggered as he held her limp and swaying body.
She shook the dizziness from her eyes, and put away his arm, but seized it again. He supported her to the table and guided her to a seat. Then he caught up a glass and put it to her wan mouth.
Ten Eyck, who had been watching them from his place, shoved a chair against Forbes relaxing knees, and set a tall glass in his hand,
saying:
"Gad, old man, you need a drink!"
Forbes took a gulp of a highball and sat staring at Persis. Ten Eyck was quietly dipping his fingers into his own glass and flicking water on Persis' face. She regained her self-control wonderingly. Her lips tried pluckily to smile, though her eyes studied Forbes with a kind of terrified anger--more at herself than at him. He met them with a gaze of adoration and dread.
As his hot brow cooled, it seemed that an icy hand passed across it.[Pg 93]
41
CHAPTER XV
THE safety match that resists all other friction needs only the touch of its peculiar mate to break into flame. And many chemical compounds, including souls, change their behavior and expose their secret identities when they meet just the right--or the just the wrong--reagent.
Persis Cabot was the wonder of her world for being at the same time so cordial and so cold, so lightly amused, so extravagant, and yet apparently so immune to the follies of passion. She was thought to be incapable of losing either her head or her heart. Mrs. Neff called her "fireproof."
Willie Enslee was universally accepted as her fiance, simply because his wealth and his family's prestige were greater than anybody's else in her circle. This made him the logical candidate. Everybody knew that he was mad about Persis in his petty way. But nobody expected Persis to fall madly in love with Willie, or to let that failure keep her from marrying him.
And now Forbes appeared from the wilderness and strange influences began to work upon her. She began to study the man with increasing interest. She resented his effect upon her, and could not resist it. He was like a sharp knife, or a loaded revolver, or the edge of a cliff, quiet and unpursuing, yet latent with danger, terrifying and therefore fascinating.
Hitherto she had played with firearms and danced along abysses and juggled daggers in many a flirtation, but always she had kept her poise and felt no danger. Now she was just a trifle startled by a feeling of insecurity.[Pg 94]
Many men had made ferocious love to her, had tried to set up a combustion in her heart, had threatened her with violence, with murder and with suicide; and she had laughed at them, laughed them back to the sanity she had never lost.
But this man Forbes made no campaign against her. If he pressed her too hard in the dance he apologized at once. He seemed to be at her mercy, and yet she felt that he brought with him some influence stronger than both. He was like one of Homer's warriors attended by a clouded god or goddess bent on his victory or his destruction--she could not tell which. When she caught him gazing at her devouringly he looked away, yet she found herself looking away, too, and breathing a little faster.
Scores of men had embraced her as she danced with them and some of them had muttered burning love into her ear. But they left her cold. This man said little or less, and he held her almost shyly; yet she felt a strange kindling in his touch, saw in his eye a smoldering.
In this last dance with him a panic of helplessness had confounded her. He had whirled
