The Safety Curtain | Page 4

to
console, upon the bowed black head.
"Don't!" he said again. "Don't cry so! What the devil does it matter?
You're safe enough with me. I'm not the sort of bounder to give you
away."
She drew a little nearer to him. "You--you're not a bounder--at all," she
assured him between her sobs. "You're just--a gentleman. That's what
you are!"
"All right," said Merryon. "Leave off crying!"
He spoke with the same species of awkward kindliness that
characterized his actions, and there must have been something
strangely comforting in his speech, for the little dancer's tears ceased as
abruptly as they had begun. She dashed a trembling hand across her
eyes.
"Who's crying?" she said.
He uttered a brief, half-grudging laugh. "That's better. Now drink some
wine! Yes, I insist! You must eat something, too. You look
half-starved."

She accepted the wine, sitting in an acrobatic attitude on the floor
facing him. She drank it, and an odd sparkle of mischief shot up in her
great eyes. She surveyed him with an impish expression--much as a
grasshopper might survey a toad.
"Are you married?" she inquired, unexpectedly.
"No," said Merryon, shortly. "Why?"
She gave a little laugh that had a catch in it. "I was only thinking that
your wife wouldn't like me much. Women are so suspicious."
Merryon turned aside, and began to pour out a drink for himself. There
was something strangely elusive about this little creature whom
Fortune had flung to him. He wondered what he should do with her.
Was she too old for a foundling hospital?
"How old are you?" he asked, abruptly.
She did not answer.
He looked at her, frowning.
"Don't!" she said. "It's ugly. I'm not quite forty. How old are you?"
"What?" said Merryon.
"Not--quite--forty," she said again, with extreme distinctness. "I'm
small for my age, I know. But I shall never grow any more now. How
old did you say you were?"
Merryon's eyes regarded her piercingly. "I should like the truth," he
said, in his short, grim way.
She made a grimace that turned into an impish smile. "Then you must
stick to the things that matter," she said. "That is--nobody's business."
He tried to look severe, but very curiously failed. He picked up a plate
of sandwiches to mask a momentary confusion, and offered it to her.

Again, with simplicity, she accepted, and there fell a silence between
them while she ate, her eyes again upon the fire. Her face, in repose,
was the saddest thing he had ever seen. More than ever did she make
him think of a child that had been hurt.
She finished her sandwich and sat for a while lost in thought. Merryon
leaned back in his chair, watching her. The little, pointed features
possessed no beauty, yet they had that which drew the attention
irresistibly. The delicate charm of her dancing was somehow expressed
in every line. There was fire, too,--a strange, bewitching fire,--behind
the thick black lashes.
Very suddenly that fire was turned upon him again. With a swift,
darting movement she knelt up in front of him, her clasped hands on his
knees.
"Why did you save me just now?" she said. "Why wouldn't you let me
die?"
He looked full at her. She vibrated like a winged creature on the verge
of taking flight. But her eyes--her eyes sought his with a strange
assurance, as though they saw in him a comrade.
"Why did you make me live when I wanted to die?" she insisted. "Is
life so desirable? Have you found it so?"
His brows contracted at the last question, even while his mouth curved
cynically. "Some people find it so," he said.
"But you?" she said, and there was almost accusation in her voice,
"Have the gods been kind to you? Or have they thrown you the
dregs--just the dregs?"
The passionate note in the words, subdued though it was, was not to be
mistaken. It stirred him oddly, making him see her for the first time as a
woman rather than as the fantastic being, half-elf, half-child, whom he
had wrested from the very jaws of Death against her will. He leaned
slowly forward, marking the deep, deep shadows about her eyes, the

vivid red of her lips.
"What do you know about the dregs?" he said.
She beat her hands with a small, fierce movement on his knees, mutely
refusing to answer.
"Ah, well," he said, "I don't know why I should answer either. But I
will. Yes, I've had dregs--dregs--and nothing but dregs for the last
fifteen years."
He spoke with a bitterness that he scarcely attempted to restrain, and
the girl at his feet nodded--a wise little feminine nod.
"I knew you had. It comes harder to a man, doesn't it?"
"I don't know why it