"I've really had a wonderful time," the lavender stocking was shrilling.

He became solicitous and followed her to the door, walking with her down the housesteps. A moist summer night, promising rain.

But the street was empty of Rachel, and he returned.

CHAPTER VII

They were in their bedroom undressing. Outside, the night rustled with an approaching storm. On the closed windows the rain began a rattle of water. A wind filled the darkness.

"What makes you act so strangely to-night, Erik?"

She looked at him as she stood uncovering herself. She desired to speak with a disarming casualness. Instead, her words came with a sound of tears in them. He was always strange--always going away from her until she had to close her eyes and love in the dark without trying to see him. Now he might go to war and be killed. Something would happen.

"Something ... something ..." kept murmuring itself in her thought.

"I love to hear you play to a crowd," he answered good-humoredly.

"Why?" She could not get the languor out of her voice.

"When people listen to music it always reminds me we are descended from fish. G.o.d, what dolts! Minds like soft-bodied sea growths. I can actually see them sometimes."

"You always dislike my friends."

She would argue with him, and in his anger his strangeness would go away.

"Your friends?" He seemed pleased at the chance of growing angry. "Allow me to point out to you that the a.s.semblage to-night had the distinction of being my friends. I discovered the collection. I brought them to the house first."

"They think you're wonderful." She would get him angry that way.

"A virtue, I admit. But it doesn't excuse their other stupidities."

They seemed to have nothing to argue about. Anna loosened her hair. The sight of it rolling in glistening bronzes and reds from her head invariably gave her a desire to cover Erik's face in it. With his face buried in the disordered ma.s.ses of her hair she would feel an exquisite fullness of love.

"You don't think Rachel stupid, do you?"

Dorn felt a relief at the sound of her name. His thought was full of her, but he had been afraid to talk.

"Miss Laskin," he replied, concealing his eagerness for the topic with a drawl, "is partially insane."

"Yes, you like insane people, though. I can always tell when you like people. You never pay any attention to them then, but sort of come hanging around me--as if you were apologizing to yourself for liking them, and doing penance. Or you call them names."

"Miss Laskin," Dorn answered, delighted to protract the conversation, "is a vivid sort of imbecile suffering from vacuous complexities. An hour alone in a room with her would drive even a philosopher to madness.

She's one of the kind of people given to inappropriate silences. She reminds me of an emotion undergoing a major operation. Good Lord, Anna, don't tell me you're jealous of her?"

It was immaterial whether he denounced or upheld Rachel. To talk of her even with indignation was a delight.

Thunder rolled, and he became silent. Anna turned her nakedness to him.

Her eyes, grown dark, beheld a yearning and a sorrow.

"Don't talk about people," she whispered. "I'm glad you hate them--all of them."

Her nudity always surprised Dorn. Her body seemed always to have grown more beautiful and impersonal. A shout of rain sounded in the night and a chill wind burst with a clatter in the darkness. He thought of Rachel as he darkened the room. There came to him a picture of her walking in the rain with her head raised and laughing.

Anna lay for a moment, awed by the suddenness of the storm. She turned quickly, her arms reaching hungrily about her husband.

"I love you," she whispered. "Oh, I love you so much. My own, my dearest!"

She felt his lips touch hers, and closed her eyes.

"Tell me...."

Dorn murmured back to her, "I adore you."

A little laugh came, and tears reached her cheeks.

"You're so wonderful," she whispered. "Think of it! It's been the same since the first night. You love me--just as you did."

She paused questioningly--an old question to which he gave an old answer.

"I love you more."

"I know it. I can feel it. You won't ever get tired of loving me?"

"Never--never as long as I live."

"Oh, you make me so happy!"

A sigh almost like a moan came from her heart.

"Oh, I'm a fool. I get frightened sometimes--when I hear you talk.

Something takes you away. You mustn't ever go away. Promise me. Listen, Erik." She dropped into a panic. "Promise me you won't go to war."

He laughed.

"That was only talk," he whispered. "You should know my talk by this time."

"I'll never know you."

"Please, Anna, don't. You hurt me when you say that."

"And when you were silent," she went on softly, "I felt--I felt something had happened. Erik, darling Erik. Oh, you're my whole life!"

"I adore you, sweetest," he murmured.

"I don't live except in you, Erik. And, oh, I'm a fool. Such a fool!"

"You're wonderful," he interrupted. He was making responses in an old ritual.