The House of Mystery | Page 9

she frolicked through the game with all vigor, zest and attention, going after every shot, smiling and sparkling over her good plays, prettily put out at her bad ones.
While he helped her on with her sweater--lingering too long over that little service of courtesy--he expressed this.
"Do you know that for physical condition you're no more the same girl whom I first met than--than I am!"
She laughed a little at the comparison. "And you are no more the same man whom I first met--than I am!"
He laughed too at this tribute to his summer coating of bronze over red. "I feel pretty fit," he admitted.
"My summer always has that effect," she went on. "Do you know that for all I've been so much out of the active world"--a shadow fell on her eyes,--"I long for country and farms? How I wish I could live always out-of-doors! The day might come--" the shadow lifted a little--"when I'd retire to a farm for good."
"You've one of those constitutions which require air and light and sunshine," he answered.
"You're quite right. I actually bleach in the shadow--like lettuce. That's why Aunt Paula always sends me away for a month every now and then to the quietest place proper for a well-brought-up young person."
His eyes shadowed as though they had caught that blasting shade in hers. From gossip about the Mountain House, later from her own admission, he knew who "Aunt Paula" was--"a spirit medium, or something," said the gossip; "a great teacher of a new philosophy," said Annette Markham.
Dr. Blake, partly because adventure had kept him over-young, held still his basic, youthful ideas about the proper environment for woman. Whenever the name "Aunt Paula," softened with the accents of affection, proceeded from that low, contralto voice, it hurt the new thing, greater than any conventional idea, which was growing up in him. He even suspected, at such times, what might be the "something nobler than nursing."
A big apple tree shaded the sidelines of the Mountain House tennis court. A bench fringed its trunk. Annette threw herself down, back against the bark. It was late afternoon. The other house-guests droned over bridge on the piazzas or walked in the far woods; they were alone out-of-doors. And Annette, always, until now, so chary of confidences, developed the true patient's weakness and began to talk symptoms.
"It is curious the state I'm in before Aunt Paula sends me away," she said; "I was a nervous child, and though I've outgrown it, I still have attacks of nerve fag or something like it. I can feel them coming on and so can she. You know we've been together so much that it's like--like two bees in adjoining cells. The cell-wall has worn thin; we can almost touch. She knows it often before I do. She makes me go to bed early; often she puts me to sleep holding my hand, as she used to do when I was a little girl. But even sleep doesn't much help. I come out of it with a kind of fright and heaviness. I have little memories of curious dreams and a queer sense, too, that I mustn't remember what I've dreamed. I grow tired and heavy--I can always see it in my face. Then Aunt Paula sends me away, and I become all right again--as I am now."
Blake did not express the impatient thought of his mind. He only said:
"A little sluggishness of the blood and a little congestion of the brain. I had such sleep once after I'd done too much work and fought too much heat in the Cavite Hospital. Only with me it took the form of nightmare--mostly, I was in process of being boloed."
"Yes, perhaps it was that"--her eyes deepened to their most faraway blue--"and perhaps it is something else. I think it may be. Aunt Paula thinks so, too, though she never says it."
What was the something? Did she stand again on the edge of revelation? Events had gone past the time when he could wait patiently for her confidence, could approach it through tact. It was the moment not for snipping but for bold charging. And his blood ran hot.
"This something--won't you tell me what it is? Why are you always so mysterious with me? Why--when I want to know everything about you?" After he had said this, he knew that there was no going backward. Doubts, fears, terrors of conventionalities, awe of his conservative, blood-proud mother in Paris--all flew to the winds.
Perhaps she caught something of this in his face, for she drew away a trifle and said:
"I might have told you long ago, but I wasn't sure of your sympathy."
"I want you to be sure of my sympathy in all things."
"Ah, but your mind is between!" That phrase brought a shock to Dr. Blake. At