Roughly, masterfully, he rained kisses upon her. He devoured her with his caresses, and the heat of his ardor melted her resistance until, finally, she surrendered, abandoning herself wholly to his pa.s.sion.

When, after a time, she flung back her head and pushed him away, her face, her neck, her shoulders were suffused with a coral pinkness and her eyes were misty.

"You must be careful!" she whispered in a tone that was less of a remonstrance than an invitation. "Remember, we're making shadowgraphs for our neighbors. That's the worst of a tent at night--one silhouettes one's very thoughts."

"Then put out the light," he muttered, thickly; but she slipped away, and her moist lips mocked him in silent laughter.

"The idea! What in the world has come over you? Why, you're the most impetuous boy--"

"Boy!" Pierce grimaced his dislike of the word. "Don't be motherly; don't treat me as if I had rompers on. You're positively maddening to-night. I never saw you like this. Why, your hair"--he ran his hands through that silken shower once more and pressed it to his face--"it's glorious!"

The Countess slipped into a combing-jacket; then she seated herself on the springy couch of pine branches over which her fur robe was spread, and deftly caught up her long runaway tresses, securing them in place with a few mysterious twists and expert manipulations.

"Boy, indeed!" he scoffed, flinging himself down beside her.

"That's over with, long ago."

"Oh, I don't feel motherly," she a.s.serted, still suffused with that telltale flush. "Not in the way you mean. But you'll always be a boy to me--and to every other woman who learns to care for you."

"Every other woman?" Pierce's eyes opened. "What a queer speech.

There aren't going to be any OTHER women." He looked on while she lighted a cigarette, then after a moment he inquired, "What do you mean?"

She answered him with another question. "Do you think I'm the only woman who will love you?"

"Why--I haven't given it any thought! What's the difference, as long as you're the only one _I_ care for? And I do love you, I worship--"

"But there WILL be others," she persisted, "There are bound to be.

You're that kind."

"Really?"

The Countess nodded her head with emphasis. "I can read men; I can see the color of their souls. You have the call."

"What call?" Pierce was puzzled.

"The--well, the s.e.x-call, the s.e.x appeal."

"Indeed? Am I supposed to feel flattered at that?"

"By no means; you're not a cad. Men who possess that attraction are spoiled sooner or later. You don't realize that you have it, and that's what makes you so nice, but--I felt it from the first, and when you feel it you'll probably become spoiled, too, like the others." This amused Phillips, but the woman was in sober earnest.

"I mean what I say. You're the kind who cause women to make fools of themselves--old or young, married or single. When a girl has it--she's lost."

"I'm not sure I understand. At any rate, you haven't made a fool of yourself."

"No?" The Countess smiled vaguely, questioningly. She opened her lips to say more, but changed her mind and in an altered tone declared, "My dear boy, if you understood fully what I'm driving at you'd be insufferable." Laying her warm hand over his, she continued: "You resent what you call my 'motherly way,' but if I were sixteen and you were forty it would be just the same. Women who are afflicted with that s.e.x appeal become men's playthings; the man who possesses it always remains a 'boy' to the woman who loves him--a bad boy, a dangerous boy, perhaps, but a boy, nevertheless. She may, and probably will, adore him fiercely, pa.s.sionately, jealously, but at the same time she will hover him as a hen hovers her chick. He will be both son and lover to her."

He had listened closely, but now he stirred uneasily. "I don't follow you," he said. "And it isn't exactly pleasant for a fellow to be told that he's a baby Don Juan, to be called a male vampire in knee-pants--especially by the woman he's going to marry."

Disregarding her attempt to speak, he went on: "What you said about other women--the way you said it--sounded almost as if-- well, as if you expected there would be such, and didn't greatly care. You didn't mean it that way, I hope. You do care, don't you, dear? You do love me?" The face Phillips turned upon the Countess Courteau was earnest, worried.

Her fingers tightened over his hand. When she spoke there was a certain listlessness, a certain fatigue in her tone. "Do you need to ask that after--what happened just now? Of course I care. I care altogether too much. That's the whole trouble. You see, the thing has run away with me, Pierce; it has carried me off my feet, and--that's precisely the point I'm trying to make."

He slipped an arm about her waist and drew her close. "I knew it wasn't merely an animal appeal that stirred you. I knew it was something bigger and more lasting than that."

"Even yet you don't understand," she declared. "The two may go together and--" But without allowing her to finish he said, vibrantly:

"Whatever it is, you seem to find it an obstacle, an objection.

Why struggle against the inevitable? You ARE struggling--I've seen you fighting something ever since that first night when truth came to us out of the storm. But, Hilda dear, I adore you. You're the most wonderful creature in the world! You're a G.o.ddess! I feel unworthy to touch the hem of your garments, but I know--that you are mine! Nothing else matters. Think of the miracle, the wonder of it! It's like a beautiful dream. I've had doubts about myself, and that's why I've let matters drift. You see, I was a sort of unknown quant.i.ty, but now I know that I've found myself. To-day I went through h.e.l.l and--I came out a man. I'm going to play a man's part right along after this." He urged her eagerly. "We've a hard trip ahead of us before we reach Dawson; winter may overtake us and delay us. We can't continue in this way. Why wait any longer?"

"You mean--?" the woman inquired, faintly.

"I mean this--marry me here, to-morrow."

"No, no! Please--" The Countess freed herself from Pierce's embrace.

"Why not? Are you afraid of me?" She shook her head silently.

"Then why not to-morrow instead of next month? Are you afraid of yourself?"

"No, I'm afraid of-what I must tell you."

Phillips' eyes were dim with desire, he was ablaze with yearning; in a voice that shook he said: "Don't tell me anything. I won't hear it!" Then, after a brief struggle with himself, he continued, more evenly: "That ought to prove to you that I've grown up. I couldn't have said it three months ago, but I've stepped out of-- of the nursery into a world of big things and big people, and I want you. I dare say you've lived--a woman like you must have had many experiences, many obstacles to overcome; but--I might not understand what they were even if you told me, for I'm pretty green. Anyhow, I'm sure you're good. I wouldn't believe you if you told me you weren't. It's no credit to me that I haven't confessions of my own to make, for I'm like other men and it merely so happens that I've had no chance to-soil myself. The credit is due to circ.u.mstance."

"Everything is due to circ.u.mstance," the woman said. "Our lives are haphazard affairs; we're blown by chance--"

"We'll take a new start to-morrow and bury the past, whatever it is."

"You make it absolutely necessary for me to speak," the Countess told him. Her tone again had a touch of weariness in it, but Pierce did not see this. "I knew I'd have to, sooner or later, but it was nice to drift and to dream--oh, it was pleasant--so I bit down on my tongue and I listened to nothing but the song in my heart." She favored Pierce with that shadowy, luminous smile he had come to know. "It was a clean, sweet song and it meant a great deal to me." When he undertook to caress her she drew away, then sat forward with her heels tucked close into the pine boughs, her chin upon her knees. It was her favorite att.i.tude of meditation; wrapped thus in the embrace of her own arms, she appeared to gain the strength and the determination necessary to go on.

"I'm not a weak woman," she began, staring at the naked candle- flame which gave light to the tent. "It wasn't weakness that impelled me to marry a man I didn't love; it was the determination to get ahead and the ambition to make something worth while out of myself--a form of selfishness, perhaps, but I tell you all women are selfish. Anyhow, he seemed to promise better things and to open a way whereby I could make something out of my life. Instead of that he opened my eyes and showed me the world as it is, not as I had imagined it to be. He was--no good. You may think I was unhappy over that, but I wasn't. Really, he didn't mean much to me. What did grieve me, though, was the death of my illusions. He was mercenary--the fault of his training, I dare say--but he had that man-call I spoke about. It's really a woman-call. He was weak, worthless, full of faults, mean in small things, but he had an attraction and it was impossible to resist mothering him. Other women felt it and yielded to it, so finally we went our separate ways. I've seen nothing of him for some time now, but he keeps in touch with me and--I've sent him a good deal of money. When he learns that I have prospered in a big way he'll undoubtedly turn up again."

Pierce weighed the significance of these words; then he smiled.

"Dear, it's all the more reason why we should be married at once.

I'd dare him to annoy you then."

"My boy, don't you understand? I can't marry you, being still married to him."

Phillips recoiled; his face whitened. Dismay, reproach, a shocked surprise were in the look he turned upon his companion.

"Still married!" he gasped. "Oh--Hilda!"

She nodded and lowered her eyes. "I supposed you knew--until I got to telling you, and then it was too late."

Pierce rose; his lips now were as colorless as his cheeks. "I'm surprised, hurt," he managed to say. "How should I know? Why, this is wretched--rotten! People will say that I've got in a mess with a married woman. That's what it looks like, too." His voice broke huskily. "How could you do it, when I meant my love to be clean, honorable? How could you let me put myself, and you, in such a position?"

"You see!" The woman continued to avoid his eye. "You haven't grown up. You haven't the least understanding."

"I understand this much," he cried, hotly, "that you've led me to make something worse than a cad of myself. Look here! There are certain things which no decent fellow goes in for--certain things he despises in other men--and that's one of them." He turned as if to leave, then he halted at the tent door and battled with himself. After a moment, during which the Countess Courteau watched him fixedly, he whirled, crying:

"Well, the damage is done. I love you. I can't go along without you. Divorce that man. I'll wait."