"Certainly. But, Miss Norne, our living here together, in my apartment--or living together anywhere else--is never going to be understood by other people. You know that, don"t you?"
After a silence, still looking at him out of clear unembarra.s.sed eyes:
"I know.... But ... I don"t want to die."
"I told you," he said sharply, "they"ll have to kill me first. So that"s all right. But how about what I am doing to your reputation?"
"I understand."
"I suppose you do. You"re very young. Once out of this blooming mess, you will have all your life before you. But if I kill your reputation for you while saving your body from death, you"ll find no happiness in living. Do you realise that?"
"Yes."
"Well, then? Have you any solution for this problem that confronts you?"
"No."
"Haven"t you any idea to suggest?"
"I don"t--don"t want to die," she repeated in an unsteady voice.
He bit his lip; and after a moment"s scowling silence under the merciless scrutiny of her eyes: "Then you had better marry me," he said.
It was some time before she spoke. For a second or two he sustained the searching quality of her gaze, but it became unendurable.
Presently she said: "I don"t ask it of you. I can shoulder my own burdens." And he remembered what he had just said to Recklow.
"You"ve shouldered more than your share," he blurted out. "You are deliberately risking death to serve your country. I enlisted you. The least I can do is to say my affections are not engaged; so naturally the idea of--of marrying anybody never entered my head."
"Then you do not care for anybody else?"
Her candour amazed and disconcerted him.
"No." He looked at her, curiously. "Do you care for anybody in that way?"
A light blush tinted her face. She said gravely: "If we really are going to marry each other I had better tell you that I did care for Prince Sanang."
"What!" he cried, astounded.
"It seems incredible, doesn"t it? Yet it is quite true. I fought him; I fought myself; I stood guard over my mind and senses there in the temple; I knew what he was and I detested him and I mocked him there in the temple.... And I loved him."
"Sanang!" he repeated, not only amazed but also oddly incensed at the nave confession.
"Yes, Sanang.... If we are to marry, I thought I ought to tell you.
Don"t you think so?"
"Certainly," he replied in an absent-minded way, his mind still grasping at the thing. Then, looking up: "Do you still care for this fellow?"
She shook her head.
"Are you perfectly sure, Miss Norne?"
"As sure as that I am alive when I awake from a nightmare. My hatred for Sanang is very bitter," she added frankly, "and yet somehow it is not my wish to see him harmed."
"You still care for him a little?"
"Oh, no. But--can"t you understand that it is not in me to wish him harm?... No girl feels that way--once having cared. To become indifferent to a familiar thing is perhaps natural; but to desire to harm it is not in my character."
"You have plenty of character," he said, staring; at her.
"You don"t think so. Do you?"
"Why not?"
"Because of what I said to you on the roof-garden that night. It was shameful, wasn"t it?"
"You behaved like many a thoroughbred," he returned bluntly; "you were scared, bewildered, ready to bolt to any shelter offered."
"It"s quite true I didn"t know what to do to keep alive. And that was all that interested me--to keep on living--having lost my soul and being afraid to die and find myself in h.e.l.l with Erlik."
He said: "Isn"t that absurd notion out of your head yet?"
"I don"t know ... I can"t suddenly believe myself safe after all those years. It is not easy to root out what was planted in childhood and what grew to be part of one during the tender and formative period.... You can"t understand, Mr. Cleves--you can"t ever feel or visualise what became my daily life in a region which was half paradise and half h.e.l.l----"
She bent her head and took her face between her fingers, and sat so, brooding.
After a little while: "Well," he said, "there"s only one way to manage this affair--if you are willing, Miss Norne."
She merely lifted her eyes.
"I think," he said, "there"s only that one way out of it. But you understand"--he turned pink--"it will be quite all right--your liberty--privacy--I shan"t bother you--annoy----"
She merely looked at him.
"After this Bolshevistic flurry is settled--in a year or two--or three--then you can very easily get your freedom; and you"ll have all life before you" ... he rose: "--and a jolly good friend in me--a good comrade, Miss Norne. And that means you can count on me when you go into business--or whatever you decide to do."
She also had risen, standing slim and calm in her exquisite Chinese robe, the sleeves of which covered her finger tips.
"Are you going to marry me?" she asked.
"If you"ll let me."
"Yes--I will ... it"s so generous and considerate of you. I--I don"t ask it; I really don"t----"
"But _I_ do."
"--And I never dreamed of such a thing."