Rosa Mundi | Page 5

him implicitly, asking no question. Side by side they drew out of the current, the man pulling strongly, his companion seconding his efforts with a fitfulness that testified to her failing powers. They reached calmer water at length, and then curtly he ordered her to turn on her back and rest.
Again without a word she obeyed him, and he floated beside her, supporting her. The early sun smote down upon them with increasing strength. Her face was deathly pale against the red of her cap.
"We must get to shore," said Courteney, observing her.
"That dreadful current!" she gasped through quivering lips.
"No. We can avoid that. It will mean a scamper over the sands when we get there, but that will do you good. Stay as you are! I will tow you."
Had she been less obedient, he would have found his task infinitely harder. But she was absolutely submissive to his will. Ten minutes later he landed her close to his own bathing-cove, which he discovered with relief to be deserted.
She would have subsided in a heap upon the sand the moment she felt it warm and dry beneath her feet; but he held her up.
"No. A good run is what you need. Come! Your mackintosh is half-a-mile away."
She looked at him with dismay, but he remained inexorable. He had no desire to have her fainting on his hands. As if she had been a boy, he gripped her by the elbow.
Again she submitted stumblingly to his behest, but when they had covered half the distance Courteney had mercy.
"You're fagged out," he said. "Rest here while I go and fetch it!"
She sank down thankfully on the shingle, and he strode swiftly on.
When he returned she had hollowed a nest for herself, and was lying curled up in the sun. Her head was pillowed on her cap, and the soft golden curls waved tenderly above her white forehead. Once more she seemed to him a mere child, and he looked down upon her with compassion.
She sat up at his approach with a boyish, alert movement, and lifted her eyes to his. He likened them half-unconsciously to the purple-blue of hare-bells, in the ardent light of the early morning.
"You are kind!" she said gratefully.
He placed the white mackintosh around her slim figure. "Take my advice," he said in his brief fashion, "and don't come bathing alone in this direction again!"
She made a small shy gesture of invitation. "Sit down a minute!" she said half-pleadingly. "I know you are very wet; but the sun is so warm, and they say sea-water never chills."
He hesitated momentarily; then, possibly because she had spoken with so childlike an appeal, he sat down in the shingle beside her.
She stretched out a slender hand to him, almost as though feeling her way. And when he took it she made a slight movement towards him, as of one about to make a confidence. "Now we can talk," she said.
He let her hand go again, and felt in the pocket of his coat, which he carried on his arm, for his pipe.
She drew a little nearer to him. "Mr. Courteney," she said, "doesn't 'Thank you' sound a silly thing to say?"
He drew back. "Don't! Please don't!" he said, and flushed uneasily as he opened his tobacco-pouch. "I would infinitely rather you said nothing at all to any one. Don't do it again, that's all."
"Mustn't I even tell Rosa Mundi?" she said.
His flush deepened as he remembered that she would probably know him by name. She must have known in those far-off Australian days that he was working with all his might to free young Baron from her toils.
He sat in silence till, "Will you tell me something?" whispered Rosemary, leaning nearer.
He stiffened involuntarily. "I don't know."
"Please try!" she urged softly. "I feel sure you can. Why--why don't you like Rosa Mundi?"
He looked at her, and his eyes were steely; but they softened by imperceptible degrees as they met the earnest sweetness of her answering look. "No, I can't tell you that," he said with decision.
But her look held him. "Is it because you don't think she is very good?"
"I can't tell you," he said again.
Still she looked at him, and again there seemed to be in her eyes that expression of a child who has seen life without understanding it. "Perhaps you think I am too young to know good from evil," she said after a moment. "I am not. I have told you I am older than I look, and in some things I am older even than my years. Then, too, I belong to Rosa Mundi. I told you, didn't I? I am her familiar spirit. She has even called me her angel, or her better self. I know a great many things about her, and some of them are