She felt his hand tighten upon hers.
"Ah!" he said. "And that was--the only reason?"
Molly was trembling.
"It was the only reason that mattered," she said in a choked voice.
He leant towards her in the dusk.
"Molly," he said. "Molly, I worship you!"
She heard the deep quiver in his voice, and it thrilled her from head to foot. She began to sob, and he drew her towards him.
"Wait!" she said, "Oh, wait! Come inside, and I"ll tell you!"
He went in with her, leaning on her shoulder.
"Sit down!" whispered Molly. "I"m going to tell you something."
"Don"t cry!" he said gently. "It may be something I know already."
"Oh, no, it isn"t!" she said with conviction.
She stood before him in the twilight, her hands clasped tightly together.
"Do you remember a girl called Mary Fielding?" she said, with a piteous effort to control her voice. "She used to be the friend of--of--your _fiancee_, Lady Maud Belville, long ago, before you had your accident."
He nodded gravely.
"I remember her," he said.
"I don"t suppose you ever noticed her much," the girl continued shakily.
"She was uninteresting, and always in the background."
"I should know her anywhere," said Durant with confidence.
"No, no," she protested. "I"m sure you wouldn"t. You--you never gave her a second thought, though she--was foolish enough--idiotic enough--to--to care whether you did or not."
"Was she?" he said softly. "Was she? And was that why she came to live among the sand-dunes and cut off her hair and wore print dresses--and--and made life taste sweet to me again?"
"Ah! You know now!" she said, with a sound that was like laughter through tears.
He held out his arms to her.
"My darling," he said. "I knew on the first day I saw you here."
She knelt down beside him with a quick, impulsive movement.
"You--knew!" she gasped incredulously.
He smiled at her with great tenderness.
"I knew," he said, "and I wondered--how I wondered--what you had come for!"
"I only came to be a friend," she broke in hastily, "to--to try to help you through your bad time."
"I guessed it must be that," he said softly over her bowed head, "when you said "No" to me yesterday."
"But you didn"t tell me you cared," protested Molly.
"No," he said. "I was so horribly afraid that you might take me out of pity, Molly."
"And I--I wasn"t going to be second fiddle!" said Molly waywardly.
She resisted him a little as he turned her face upwards, but he had his way. There was a quiver of laughter in his voice when he spoke again.
"You could never be that," he said. "You were made to lead the orchestra. Still, tell me why you did it, darling! Make me understand!"
And Molly yielded at length with her arms about his neck.
"I loved you!" she said pa.s.sionately. "I loved you!"
THE WOMAN OF HIS DREAM
PROLOGUE
It was growing very dark. The decks gleamed wet in the light of the swinging lamps. The wind howled across the sea like a monster in torment. It would be a fearful night.
The man who stood clutching at the slanting deck rail was drenched from head to foot, but, despite this fact, he had no thought of going below.
Reginald Carey had been for many voyages on many seas, but the fascination of a storm in the bay attracted him irresistibly still. He had no sympathy with the uneasy crowd in the saloons. He even exulted in the wild tumult of wind and sea and blinding rain. He was as one spellbound in the grip of the tempest.
Curt and dry of speech, abrupt at times almost to rudeness, he was a man of whom most people stood in awe, and with whom very few were on terms of intimacy. Yet in the world of men he had made his mark.
By camp-fires and on the march, in prison and in hospital, Carey the journalist had become a byword for coolness and endurance. It was Carey, caustic of humour, uncompromising of att.i.tude, who sauntered through a hail of bullets to fill a wounded man"s water-tin; Carey who pushed his way among stampeding mules to rescue sorely needed medical stores; Carey who had limped beside footsore, jaded men, and whistled them out of their depression.
There were two fingers missing from Carey"s left hand, and the limp had become permanent when he sailed home from South Africa at the end of the war, but he was the personal friend of half the army though there was not a single man who could boast that he knew him thoroughly well. For none knew exactly what this man, who scoffed so freely at disaster, carried in his heart.
As he leaned on the rail of the tossing vessel, gazing steadfastly into the howling darkness, his face was as serene as if he sailed a summer sea. The great waves that dashed their foam over him as he stood were powerless to raise fear in his soul! He stood as one apart--a lonely watcher whom no danger could appal.
It was growing late, but he took no count of time. More than once he had been hoa.r.s.ely advised to go below, but he would not go. He believed himself to be the only pa.s.senger on deck, and he clung to his solitude.
The bare thought of the stuffy saloon was abhorrent to him. He marvelled that no one else had developed the same distaste.