"But why did you run away?"
"Just--because!" Then, after a pause, "Why did you follow?"
"I don"t know, do you? Just--because, I suppose!"
And then they both laughed again.
"But I know why you ran. You were afraid!" said Paul.
Her eyes flashed and there was a fine scorn in her tones.
"Afraid--of what, pray?"
"Of being caught--too easily! Come, now--weren"t you?"
"I wouldn"t contradict you for the world, Paul."
She lingered over his name with a cadence in her tone that made it almost a caress. It thrilled him again as it had from the beginning.
"But I"ll forgive you for running away from me, since I am so fortunate as to be with you now where you can"t possibly run very far! Strange, isn"t it, how Fate has thrown us together?"
"Very!"
There was a dry sarcasm in the tones, and a mockery in the glance, that told him she was not blind to his manoeuvres. Their eyes met and they laughed again. Truly, life just then was exceedingly pleasant for the two on the deck of the Lusitania.
"But I was looking for you before that, Opal--long before that--weeks!"
The girl was truly surprised now and turned to him wonderingly. Then, without question, he told her of his overhearing her at the garden party--what a long time ago it seemed!--and his desire, ever since, to meet her.
He told her, too, of his hearing her laugh at the theatre that night; but the girl was silent, and said not a word of having seen him there.
Confidences were all right for a man, she thought, but a girl did well to keep some things to herself.
He did not say that he was deliberately following her to America, but the girl had her own ideas upon the subject and smiled to herself at the lively development of affairs since that tiresome garden party she had found so unbearable. Here was an adventure after her own heart.
And yet Opal Ledoux had much on her mind just then. The Boy had read the signs upon her face correctly. She was troubled.
For a long time they sat together, and looking far out over the vast expanse of dancing blueness, they spoke of life--and the living of it.
And both knew so little of either!
It was a strange talk for the first one--so subtly intimate, with its flashes of personality and freedom from conventions, that it seemed like a meeting of old friends, rather than of strangers. Some intimacies are like the oak, long and steady of growth; others spring to full maturity in an hour"s time. And these two had bridged the s.p.a.ce of years in a few moments of converse. They understood each other so well.
This same idea occurred to them simultaneously, as she looked up at him with eyes glowing with a quick appreciation of some well-expressed and worthy thought. Something within him stirred to sudden life--something that no one else had ever reached.
He looked into her eyes and thought he had never looked into the eyes of a woman before. She smiled--and he was sure it was the first time he had ever seen a woman smile!
"I am wild to be at home again," she was saying, "fairly crazy for America! How I love her big, broad, majestic acres--the splendid sweep of her meadows--the ma.s.sive grandeur of her mountain peaks--the glory of her open skies! You too, I believe, are a wanderer on strange seas. You can hardly fail to understand my longing for the homeland!"
"I do understand, Opal. I am on my first visit to your country. Tell me of her--her inst.i.tutions, her people! Believe me, I am greatly interested!"
And he was--in _her_! Nothing else counted at that moment. But the girl did not understand that--then!
For half an hour, perhaps, she lost herself in an eloquent eulogy of America, while the Boy sat and watched her, catching the import of but little that she said, it must be confessed, but drinking in every detail of her expressive countenance, her flashing, l.u.s.trous eyes, her red, impulsive lips and rounded form, and her white, slender hands, always employed in the expression of a thought or as the outlet for some pa.s.sing emotion. He caught himself watching for the occasional glimpses of her small white teeth between the rose of her lips. He saw in her eyes the violet sparks of smouldering fires, kindled by the volcanic heart sometimes throbbing and threatening so close to the surface. When the eruption came!--Fascinated he watched the rise and sweep of her white arm. Every line and curve of her body was full of suggestion of the ardent and restless and impulsive temperament with which nature had so lavishly endowed her. She was alive with feeling--alive to the finger-tips with the joy of life, the fullness of a deep, emotional nature.
It occurred to Paul that nature had purposely left her body so small, albeit so beautifully rounded, that it might devote all its powers to the building therein of a magnificent, flaming soul--that her inner nature might always triumph. But Opal had never been especially conscious of a soul--scarcely of a body. She had not yet found herself.
Paul"s emotions were in such chaotic rebellion that the thunder of his heart-beats mingled with the pulse hammering through his brain and made him for the first time in his life curiously deaf to his own thoughts.
As she met his eye, expressing more than he realized of the storm within, her own fell with a sudden sense of apprehension. She rose and looked far out over the restless waves with a sudden flush on her dimpled cheek, a subtle excitement in her rapid words.
"As for our men, Paul, they are only human beings, but mighty with that strength of physique and perfect development of mind that makes for power. They are men of dauntless purpose. They are men of pure thoughts and lofty ideals. They know what they want and bend every ambition and energy to its attainment. Of course I speak of the average American--the _type_! The normal American is a born fighter. Yes, that is the key-note of American supremacy! We never give up! never! In my country, what men want, they get!"
She raised her hand in a quaint, expressive gesture, and the loose sleeve fell back, leaving her white arm bare. He sprang to his feet, his eyes glowing.
"And in my country, what men want, they _take_!" he responded fiercely--almost brutally and without a second"s warning Paul threw his arms about her and crushed her against his breast. He pressed his lips mercilessly upon her own, holding them in a kiss that seemed to Opal would never end.
"How--how dare you!" she gasped, when at last she escaped his grasp and faced him in the fury of outraged girlhood. "I--I--hate you!"
"Dare? When one loves one dares anything!" was his husky response. "I shall have had my kiss and you can never forget that! Never! never!"
And Paul"s voice grew exultant.
Opal had heard of the brutality, the barbarism of pa.s.sion, but her life had flowed along conventional channels as peacefully as a quiet river.
She had longed to believe in the fury of love--in that irresistible attraction between men and women. It appealed to her as it naturally appeals to all women who are alive with the intensity of life. But she had _seen_ nothing of it.
Now she looked living Pa.s.sion in the face for the first time, and was appalled--half frightened, half fascinated--by the revelation. That kiss seemed to scorch her lips with a fire she had never dreamed of. With the universal instinct of shamed womanhood, she pressed her handkerchief to her lips, rubbing fiercely at the soiled spot. He divined her thought and laughed, with a note of exultation that stirred her Southern blood.
In defiance she raised her eyes and searched his face, seeking some solution of the mystery of her own heart"s strange, rebellious throbbing. What could it mean?
Paul took another step toward her, his face softening to tenderness.
"What is it, Opal?" he breathed.
"I was--trying--to understand you."
"I don"t understand myself sometimes--certainly not to-day!"
"I thought you were a gentleman!"
(I wonder if Eve didn"t say that to Adam in the garden!)
"I have been accustomed to entertain that same idea myself," he said, "but, after all, what is it to be a gentleman? All men can be gentle when they get what they want. That"s no test of gentility. It takes circ.u.mstances outside the normal to prove man"s civilization. When his desires meet with opposition the brute comes to the surface--that"s all."
Another rush of pa.s.sion lighted his eyes and sought its reflection in hers. Opal turned and fled.
In the seclusion of her stateroom Opal faced herself resolutely. A sensation of outrage mingled with a strange sense of guilt. Her resentment seemed to blend with something resembling a strange, fierce joy. She tried to fight it down, but it would not be conquered.