Every one had gone. The guests to golf at the Havershams; Mary, Lady Paton, and Lady Henge for a long drive. They had all respected the sensitive requirements of her new position. She was to be left alone, and as Camelia walked from room to room, the big house was desolate.

She nourished a sense of resentment, of injury, for it seemed to thrust away the chilly stupor of fear, fear of that new presence walking with her, waiting for her recognition. The loneliness, the melancholy, to which she could only feign blindness, were almost unendurable. The tears rose to her eyes more than once, and her thoughts circled nearer and nearer to Perior's great unkindness. It was when the melancholy seemed suddenly to lay an imperative hand upon her that she flew to the writing-table and wrote the note. She looked at the clock as she heard the groom departing on horseback. Perior might easily arrive at six, and at the thought her spirits rose with a great soaring bound, and laughed down at the cold enemy. When he arrived she would see what would happen.

She reined back her imagination from any plan.

According to his manner, she would tell immediately, or delay telling until a favorable moment. Perhaps when he knew he would say that his heart was completely broken, but the thought of his unhappiness only seemed to send her spirits into a higher ecstasy of joyousness. She felt them bubble-like, floating in illusion, but the relief of the unthinking hour--she seemed to live in it only, to breathe only its expectancy--buoyed her above the clouds. In the long drawing-room, where the firelight made the autumnal landscape outside, its distant hills purpling with chilly evening, a mere picture, framed for the contrast in her rosy mood, she danced, trying over new steps. She had always loved her dancing, loved to feel herself so lovely, her loveliness set to such musical motion, the words of the song. She hummed the sad, dead beauty of a pavane, pacing it with stately pleasure; the gracious pathos of an old gavotte; and, feeling herself a brook, her steps slid into the flowing ripple of the courante. Perior had always loved these exquisite old dances. She would dance for him, of course. That thought had been growing, and the gavotte, the courante, the pavane becoming rehearsals.

Yes, she would dance for him--at first. Flushed, panting a little from the long preparation, she ran upstairs to put on a white dress, a new one made for dancing, with sleeves looped over bare arms, flowing sash, and skirt like a flower-bell. She lingered on each detail. She must be beautiful for Alceste; dear Alceste, poor, poor Alceste; how unhappy he would be--when he knew. And suppose he should not come. The thought went through her like a dagger as she held a row of pearls against her throat. Over them she looked with terror-stricken eyes at the whiteness of her beauty--useless beauty? Ah, she could not believe it, and she clasped the pearls on a breast that heaved with the great sigh of her negation. She could not believe it. He must come. And when she reentered the drawing-room the sound of a horse's hoofs outside set the time to the full throb of an ecstasied affirmation.

A delicious flood of contentment went through her. She stood smiling in the dark yet luminous room, where only the firelight shone along the polished oak of floor and wainscoting, half unconsciously emphasizing her sense of the moment's drama by pressing her hands on her heart. Of course he had come. How could he not come if she really wanted him? Dear Alceste. In a moment he had entered. The firelight, as she stood before him, seemed to shine through her pearly glimmering. She looked sprite-like, a transparent fairy. Her dress, her att.i.tude, her eyes, the hovering expectancy. Perior, too, was immediately conscious of drama, and felt as immediately an impulse to flight; but he came forward, a quick look of calm arming his st.u.r.dy opposition to the atmosphere of exaggerated meanings.

"Well, here I am," he said, in a manner intended by its commonplace to rebuff the significance, whatever it might be, of eyes, dress, and att.i.tude. Camelia took his hand, joyously entering once more into the dear, enchanted fairy-land--the old sense of a game, only a more delightful, a more exciting game than ever. She could almost have whirled him into the circle--a mad dancing whirl round and round the room. How astonished he would have been! Solemn, staid old Alceste!

"Yes, here you are. At last," she said. "How shamefully you have punished me this time!"

She laughed, but Perior sighed.

"I haven't been punishing you," he said, walking away to the fireplace.

Camelia followed him and watched him hold out his hand to the warmth.

"Is it so cold?" she asked.

"Very chilly; the wind catches one on that mile along the common. My hands are half-numbed." Prettily, as she leaned in her illumined whiteness beside him, she took his hands between her own and rubbed them briskly.

"You wrote that you were unhappy," said Perior, looking down at the daintily imprisoned hands; "what is the matter?"

"The telling will keep. I am happier now."

"Did you get me here on false pretences?" He smiled as he now looked at her, and the smile forgave her in advance.

"No, no. I needed you very much; really I did. I am growing melancholy; and I was all alone. I hate being alone."

"There, that will do. They are quite warm now; thanks very much. Where are the others?"

"The others? They are away," said Camelia vaguely.

"Rodrigg?"

"He comes back to-night, I think."

"And Henge?" Perior asked it with a little hesitation. Of late he had wondered much about Arthur and Camelia. There was an effort in the unconscious aloofness of his voice.

"In London too." Camelia looked clearly at him. No, she would not tell him now. The happy half-hour she must guard for them both. Her oblivion, his ignorance, would make a fairy-land. Let him think even that she had sent Arthur away finally. Arthur had no place in fairy-land.

"All the others are out," she repeated, "golfing, calling, driving. But are you not glad to see me, even if I seem happier than strict consistency requires?"

"Yes, I am glad to see you." Perior's eyes showed the half-yielding, half-defiance of his perplexity. "But tell me, what is the matter? Don't be so mysterious."

"But tell me," she returned, stepping backward, her skirt held out for displayal, "is not my dress pretty?"

"Very pretty." Perior leaned back against the mantelpiece with an air of resignation. "Very exquisite."

"Shall I dance for you?"

"By all means; since the dress was put on for that, I summoned for that.

Isn't it so?"

She made no reply, her smile lingering as she turned from him, and showing in its fixedness a certain gravity. He was satisfied that conjecture as to her meaning, her plan in all this, only wearied him, yet sorry that he had come. Under the weariness he was resentfully aware of excitement. And what of Arthur? Camelia's whole manner subtly suggested that Arthur no longer counted. The note might be explained as an after-throb of doubt, or at least of dreariness, in a world momentarily without big issues. If she had refused Arthur definitely?

The thought, as his eyes followed Camelia's exquisite steps and slides, shook some careful balancing of self-control. He felt stripped of a shield, unpleasantly exposed to a dangerous moment. Camelia was dancing quite silently, yet the air, to Perior's musical brain, seemed full of melody, and she the soundless embodiment of music made visible--so lovely, so dear to him; so dear in spite of everything. She was like a white flower, tilting, bending in the wind. She skimmed like a swallow, ran with rippled steps like a brook, flitted with light, languid balancings, a b.u.t.terfly hovering on extended wings. Her slender body, like a fountain, rose and fell in a continuity of changing loveliness.

Her golden head shone in the dusk.

Perior watched her, half-dreaming, half-dazzled. The long moments of acute, delicious contemplation drifted by as peacefully, as stilly as falling rose-petals, m.u.f.fling all outer jars and murmurs, blurring the past, the future, making the present enchanted.

When she was far off his heart beat for her return, and when the swaying, hovering whiteness came near he shrank from the nearness. The unexpected sweeping turn that caught her away suddenly into the half-visionary distance stabbed him through with a pang of relief and disappointment.

He was entranced, half-mesmerized, conscious only of his delight in her, when her circling at last grew slower, the musical beat of the recovering tilt faltered. She came on a sliding, wavering step, and sank like the softest sigh before him, folded together in her wing-like whiteness.

"You enchanting creature," Perior murmured. He bent over her--he would have lifted her--taking her hands, but Camelia herself rose between his arms, and inevitably they closed about her. It was so natural, so fitting in all its strangeness, that to Camelia the slow circling of the dance seemed still to carry her round and round, unbroken by the crash of a great revelation. She closed her eyes, hardly wondering at her perfect happiness, and from the last revolving mists the reality dawned sweetly upon her--the only reality. She had danced out of the game; it lay far behind her. Through it she had blundered on a mistake, but her mind put that swiftly aside. The mistake mattered nothing, the last act merely of the game--a reckless, angered act. She thought now that the game would hardly have been begun if only Perior had put his arms around her, claimed and reclaimed her foolishness, long ago. Of course she loved him. It needed but that to let her know.

But to Perior the moment, after its irresistible impulse, was merely one of shame and self-disgust. He held her, for she was enchanting, and she had enchanted him. Disloyalty to his friend did not forbid that satisfaction. That she meant to marry Arthur was now impossible. She had tossed him aside, dissatisfied; he could not pity Arthur for his escape, nor credit Camelia with disinterestedness. She was bored, disappointed, reckless in a wish for excitement. He a.n.a.lyzed her present mood brutally--the mood of a vain child, made audacious by childhood intimacy, her appet.i.te for conquest whetted by his apparent indifference; he had not known that she would pay such a price for conquest. It was an ugly revelation of Camelia, but the revelation of himself was uglier. He at least pretended to self-respect. The folly of her coquetry hardly surprised him; his own yielding to it did; yet in the very midst of his self-disgust he fulfilled it to the uttermost by stooping his head to her upturned face, blind to its intrinsic innocence, and kissing her lips. As he kissed her he knew that for angry weeks and months he had longed to kiss her, the unrecognized longing wrestling with his pride, with his finer fondness for her--the firm, grave fondness of years, with even his loyalty to Henge. That barrier gone, the longing rushed over the others. Among the wrecks his humiliation overwhelmed him:--a girl he loved, but a girl he would not woo, had wooing been of avail!--in it he was able to be generous.

The moment had not been long. He released her. Feeling most ungentle, he yet put her away gently by the whole thrust of his arm. Leaning on the mantel-shelf, his face averted from hers, he said: "Too enchanting, Camelia. I have forgotten myself," and he added, "Forgive me."

"But _I_ did it!" Camelia's tone was one of most dauntless joyousness.

She was necessarily as sure of his love as of her own, surer of its long-enduring priority. But his love feared--that was natural: dared not hope for hers--too natural. She could not bear to have him put her away in even a momentary doubt of her sincerity. Clasping both arms about his neck she said quite childishly, in her great unconsciousness of his thoughts about her--

"Why would you never say you were fond of me? Why would you never say you loved me? Say it now--say that you love me."

His bewilderment at her audacity stung him to anger, and in self-defence, for her sake too as well as for his own, almost to brutality. "Ah, I love you enough to kiss you, Camelia," he said; "you are only fit for that. There," he unlocked the clasping arms, "go away."

The unmistakable sternness of his face struck her with pained perplexity. He would not meet her eyes; he turned from her, looking wretched. A flashing thought revealed the possibility of tempted loyalty. Did he think her bound? Divine the engagement? He could not have heard of it already. She saw, her heart throbbing at the half-truth, half-falseness of the unbecoming vision, how she must appear to him in that distorting illumination. Free in her own eyes, she hesitated on a lie that would release him from his doubts. But as she stood looking at him, smiling, a little sternly too, at the test, the door burst open with unpleasant suddenness, and Mr. Rodrigg, bull-like in his vehemence, charged into the room.

CHAPTER XVII

Camelia felt, in the glaring pause Mr. Rodrigg made before Perior's baffling presence, that she herself was the red scarf he sought. Her mind, alert in self-defence, even in this stress of joy and terror, divined some unknown danger. Mr. Rodrigg had faded into complete insignificance, put away with the other toys; she looked coldly at him, as at a dusty jack-in-the-box, protruding its fatuousness in a grown-up world. Yet she felt the necessity for self-command and quick intelligence. Something ominous shone in Mr. Rodrigg's eye. The lid must be pressed down firmly, fastened securely; she was sure of her complete control over the silly plaything, but an extinguishing dexterity might be requisite.

"Well, Mr. Rodrigg," she said; and her tone fully implied the undesirability of his presence.

"Can I see you alone, Miss Paton?"

Mr. Rodrigg's voice was offensively strident. Camelia looked at Perior, who, from under lowering brows, bent ungracious eyes on Mr. Rodrigg's flushed insistency.

"No, I don't think you can--at present." She did not want to vex Mr.

Rodrigg--she spoke not unkindly; but Mr. Rodrigg was dense, coa.r.s.ely dense, or else coa.r.s.ely angry. Angry with her; Camelia had time by now to wonder at that, and to feel less amicable with the greater need for feigning amiability.

He closed the door with decision. "Then I will speak before Mr. Perior.

As a family friend, Mr. Perior will not be amiss between us. He is a witness of the whole affair. I appeal to Mr. Perior. Miss Paton, I have just met Lady Henge. She tells me that you accepted her son this morning."