The Port of Adventure | Page 2

rose, gray and yellow, almost like a faded Persian rug.
When Carmen had looked past the fountain across the lawn, down the path cut between pink oleanders, where the man she expected ought to appear, she trailed her white dress over terrace and grass to peer under the green roof of the bamboo forest. It was like a temple with tall pillars of priceless jade that supported a roof of the same gray-green, starred in a vague pattern with the jewels of sunset. Carmen did not see the beauty of the magic temple, though she was conscious of her own. She hated to think that Nick Hilliard should keep her waiting, and there was cruelty in the clutch she made at a cluster of orange blossoms as she passed a long row of trees in terra-cotta pots on the terrace. Under the bamboos she scattered a handful of creamy petals on the golden brown earth, and rubbed them into the ground with the point of her bronze shoe. Then she held up her hand to her face, to smell the sweetness crushed out of the blossoms.
Why didn't Nick come?
There was a short cut leading from the land which she had selected off her own immense ranch to sell to Nick Hilliard, and this way he sometimes took if he were in a hurry. But she knew that he loved the path between the pink walls of oleander, and preferred to come by it, though it was longer. He ought to have been with her at least ten minutes ago, for she had asked him to come early. She had said in the letter which she gave old Simeon Harp to take to Nick, "This is your last night. There are a great, great many things I want to talk to you about." But there was only one thing about which she wished Nick Hilliard to talk to her, and there were two reasons why she expected him to talk of it to-night.
One reason was, because he was going East, and planned to be gone a month, a dreadful plan which she feared and detested. The second reason concerned the anniversary of a certain event. Some people would have called the event a tragedy, but to Carmen it had made life worth living. Other people's tragedies were shadowy affairs to her, if she had not to suffer from them.
It was one of her pleasures to dress beautifully, in a style that might have seemed exaggerated on a different type of woman, and would have been extravagant for any except the mistress of a fortune. But never had Carmen taken more pains than to-night, when she expected only one guest. Her white chiffon and silver tissue might have been a wedding gown. She adored jewellery, and had been almost a slave to her love for it, until she began to value something else more--something which, unfortunately, her money could not buy, though she hoped and prayed her face might win it. She had quantities of diamonds, emeralds, and rubies--her favourite stones--but instinct had told her that even one would spoil the effect she wished to make to-night. She wore only a long rope of pearls, which would have suited a bride; and as she stood in the shadow of her bamboo temple, the pearls drank iridescent lights: green from the jade-coloured trees, pink from roses trailing over arbours, and gold from the California poppies thick among the grass.
Of course, any one of many reasonable things might have happened to delay Nick. He was busy, busier even than when he had been foreman of the Gaylor ranch a year ago, but Carmen could not bear to think that he would let mere reasonable things keep him away from her, just this night of all others. For exactly a year--a year to-day, a year this morning, so it was already more than a year--she had ceased to be a slave, and she had had everything she wanted, except one thing. Perhaps she had that too, yet she was not sure: and she could hardly wait to be sure. Nobody but Nick could make her so, and he ought to be in joyful haste to do it. He was not cold blooded. One could not look at Nick and think him that, yet to her he sometimes seemed indifferent. Carmen made herself believe that it was his respect which held him back. How desperately she wanted to know! Yet there was a strange pleasure in not knowing, such as she might never feel again, when she was sure.
Suddenly, far off, there was a rustling in the bamboo forest. A figure like a shadow, but darker than other shadows, moved in the distance. Carmen's heart jumped. She took a step forward, then stopped. It was not Nick