"Oh, much more, Cynthia," he cried, and he bent his head and kissed her. He put her away from him and looked her over from her delicate feet to the fair crown of her hair. She wore a satin gown of white with her diamonds in her hair, and a rope of pearls about her neck.
"There! That"s that!" he said, and Cynthia with a laugh and the blush of a girl answered, "Thank you." Harry Rames lit a cigarette and Cynthia"s eyes followed each movement and followed it with incredulity. The change so ardently longed for by her had come then?
He loved--he actually loved!
"Since when?" she asked gently.
"Do you remember one evening when you stood there by the door, very wistful, and told me something about yourself which I did not know?"
"Yes, I remember. I was unwise."
"You were not. For it began then."
"Really?"
She went up to him, and he caught her hand in his and held it tightly clasped.
"I looked at you to-night as we sat at dinner. There was no one but you at the dinner-table. How on earth you could have brought yourself to marry me, I can"t think."
"I told you," said Cynthia, "I was afraid," and there was a note of exultation in the confession as though now at last she was freed from fear. Harry Rames lifted her suddenly from the ground and held her close to him. She hung inert in his arms.
"That"s over," he said.
"Quite."
"I love you, Cynthia."
Cynthia threw her head back and closed her eyes, giving to him her face, her throat.
"I wanted to hear you say that," she whispered. He carried her over to the sofa and laid her down.
For a week or two after that evening Cynthia walked in a dream. The great trouble which had weighed upon her thoughts incessantly was altogether gone. Mr. Benoliel had been right in his conjectures. He must still be right, she reasoned. He had foreseen the trouble accurately. "You will be living with your enemy or living quite alone." But he had added a saving clause. If on both sides there was love, then salvation would be found. Cynthia did not enquire very deeply into Mr. Benoliel"s meaning. The salvation would come automatically, following upon love. She was content to think that and she walked in a world of roses as in the days of her girlhood in the estancia before James Challoner had come to claim her.
But after a fortnight she waked from her dream. Life was different: it was intensified. There was a little more sunlight on a sunny day, a little more sparkle in the summer, one walked to music. But the trouble was not gone, in spite of the fact that on both sides there was love. For with love, contentment had not come to Harry Rames. He watched himself, but she watched him closer and she knew. His sleep grew disturbed. The torment of his soul was not appeased. Daily he became more and more the convict at the oar. There grew up between them a loving enmity.
A morning came in the middle of July when to Cynthia the strain became intolerable. She was riding under the trees in the Row. It was not yet half-past nine and the air was still fresh with the dews of the night.
A light haze hung near to the ground, the sunlight touched the green alleys of trees to gold, and far off across the Park soldiers were marching to the drums and fifes. She had reached the cross-road which leads to the Albert Gate when an impulse seized her. Mr. Brook was riding at her side, dilating enthusiastically on the importance of their group in the House of Commons, while Cynthia from time to time said mechanically "yes," and again "yes," and wished with her whole heart that all the bores in London would not take their exercise at half-past nine in the morning. Mr. Brook was in full swing when Cynthia abruptly reined in her horse.
"Good-by," she said, "I am afraid I have something I must do," and to Mr. Brook"s astonishment she turned and cantered quickly back to Hyde Park Corner. Thence she rode to Grosvenor Square, gave her horse to her groom, and burst into Mr. Benoliel"s dining-room where he sat breakfasting delicately amidst his silver and flowers. She waved the butler from the room and sat down at the table at right-angles to Mr.
Benoliel.
"I am very unhappy," she said. "I was riding in the Park. It seemed ridiculous to be unhappy on a day like this. Yet I am. So I put my pride in my pocket."
She spoke with a kind of petulance, like one aggrieved and surprised at the contrariness of things. But Mr. Benoliel recognized that her distress was very real. His face clouded over; he laid his hand upon her arm.
"Have some breakfast, Cynthia."
"Food!" cried Cynthia in contempt. Then she changed her tone. "Well, I haven"t had any breakfast. Perhaps--yes."
She was a girl with a healthy appet.i.te and very unhappily she ate a big breakfast.
"Now light a cigarette and tell me about it."
He pushed over a silver box lined with cedar wood from which Cynthia took a cigarette. She tapped the end upon the table and lighted it.
Mr. Benoliel"s cigarettes were famous for their freshness and the delicacy of their aroma. Cynthia inhaled the tobacco and was a little comforted.
"No," she said. "I can"t tell you all about it. I just want to ask you a question."
"Yes?"
"You remember the warning you gave me at Culver when you didn"t know that I was married?"
"Quite well," said Mr. Benoliel regretfully. "It came too late."
"I am glad that it came too late," Cynthia observed quietly. "For I might have taken it."
Mr. Benoliel looked perplexed.
"Yet you are unhappy, Cynthia?"
"Very. None the less I wouldn"t go back. But I don"t want you to ask me questions. I will tell you at once that you were right--quite right up to a point. And the happiness both of Harry and myself depends upon your being right all through."
Mr. Benoliel"s eyes flashed into life.
"There is a chance then?"
"Oh yes! If you are right."
"Let me hear!"
Cynthia put her question.
"What did you exactly mean when you said that even if the change you feared should come and some latent ambition should spring to life and s.n.a.t.c.h him back, separation need not follow, provided that on both sides there was love?"
A gravity overspread Benoliel"s face.
"I meant, my dear, that sooner or later," he said gently, "after much tribulation, much revolt, one of the two will make the necessary sacrifice, and will make it whole-heartedly."
Cynthia was silent for a little while.
"Yes," she said at last in a low voice. "Of late I have begun to think that that is what you meant."
She dropped her cigarette upon a plate and rose. "Thank you, Mr.
Benoliel," she said, and she walked with a trailing step to the door.
At the door she paused.
"And is it always the woman who must make the sacrifice?" she asked; and Mr. Benoliel lost in a moment all that second-hand aspect of the dilettante which habitually cloaked him.
"Always," he said, with a ringing gravity of voice. "That is the law of the world, and neither man nor woman shall change it."