The Doctor of Pimlico | Page 5

battery at work.
Her fresh face, betraying, as it did, her love of a free, open-air life, was
one of those strangely mysterious countenances met only once in a
lifetime. It seemed to be the quintessence of pain and passion, conflict
and agony, desire and despair. She was not one of those befrilled,
fashion-plate dolls that one meets at the after-war crushes and dances,
but was austerely simple in dress, with a face which betrayed a spiritual
nobility, the very incarnation of modern womanhood, alive with
modern self-knowledge, modern weariness and modern sadness.
Her beautiful hair, worn plain and smooth, was black as
night--wonderful hair. But still more wonderful were those great, dark,
velvety eyes, deep and unfathomable. In them the tragedy of life was
tumultuously visible, yet they were serene, self-possessed, even steady
in their quiet simplicity. To describe her features is not an easy task.
They were clear-cut, with a purity of the lines of the nose and brow
seldom seen in a woman's face, dark, well-arched eyebrows, a pretty
mouth which had just escaped extreme sensuousness. Cheeks soft and
delicately moulded, a chin pointed, a skin remarkable for its fineness
and its clear pallor, the whole aspect of her face being that of sweetness
combined with nobility and majesty. In it there was no dominant
expression, for it seemed to be a mask waiting to be stirred into life.
Fetherston had known Sir Hugh slightly for several years, but as Enid
had been so much abroad with Mrs. Caldwell, he had never met her
until that accidental encounter in Biarritz.
"We've been up here six weeks," she was telling Fetherston. "Father
always gets a lot of golf up here, you know, and I'm rather fond of it."
"I fear I'm too much of a foreigner nowadays to appreciate the game,"
Walter laughed. "Last season some Italians in Rome formed a club--the
usual set of ultra-smart young counts and marquises--but when they
found that it entailed the indignity of walking several miles they
declared it to be a game only fit for the populace, and at once disbanded
the association."

The men were discussing the work of the battery, for four of the
officers had been invited, and the point raised was the range of
mountain guns.
Walter Fetherston glanced at the general through his pince-nez with a
curious expression, but he did not join in the conversation.
Enid's eyes met his, and the pair exchanged curiously significant
glances.
He bent to pick up his serviette, and in doing so he whispered to her: "I
must see you outside for a moment before I go. Go out, and I'll join
you."
Therefore, when the meal had concluded, the girl went forth into the
secluded garden at the rear of the hotel, where in a few moments the
man joined her at a spot where they could not be overlooked.
She turned towards him, separate, remote, incongruous, her dark eyes
showing an angry flash in them.
"Why have you come here?" she demanded with indignation. The
whole aspect of her face was tragic.
"To see you again," was his brief reply. "Before we parted at Biarritz
you lied to me," he added in a hard tone.
She held her breath, staring straight into his eyes.
"I--I don't understand you!" she stammered. "You are here to
torment--to persecute me!"
"I asked you a question, Enid, but in response you told me a deliberate
lie. Think--recall that circumstance, and tell me the truth," he said very
quietly.
She was silent for a moment. Then, with her mouth drawn to hardness,
she replied: "Yes, it is true--I lied to you, just as you have lied to me.
Remember what you told me that moonlit night when we walked by the

sea towards the Grotto of Love. I was a fool to have believed in you--to
have trusted you as I did! You left me, and, though I wrote time after
time to your club, you refused to send me a single line."
"Because--because, Enid, I dared not," replied her companion.
"Why not?" she demanded quickly. "You told me that you loved me,
yet--yet your own actions have shown that you lied to me!"
"No," he protested in a low, earnest, hoarse voice; "I told you the truth,
Enid, but----"
"But what?" she interrupted in quickly earnestness.
"Well," he replied after a brief pause, "the fact is that I am compelled to
wear a mask, even to you, the woman I love. I cannot tell you the
truth--I cannot, dearest, for your own sake."
"And you expect me to believe this lame story--eh?" she laughed. She
was pale and fragile, yet she seemed to expand and to dilate with force
and energy.
"Enid," he answered in a low voice, with honesty in his eyes, "I