The Safety Curtain | Page 5

said. "You have me there."
He was still looking full into those shadowy eyes with a curious, dawning fellowship in his own.
"You have me there," he repeated. "But I do know. I was happy enough once, till--" He stopped.
"Things went wrong?" insinuated the Dragon-Fly, sitting down on her heels in a childish attitude of attention.
"Yes," Merryon admitted, in his sullen fashion. "Things went wrong. I found I was the son of a thief. He's dead now, thank Heaven. But he dragged me under first. I've been at odds with life ever since."
"But a man can start again," said the Dragon-Fly, with her air of worldly wisdom.
"Oh, yes, I did that." Merryon's smile was one of exceeding bitterness. "I enlisted and went to South Africa. I hoped for death, and I won a commission instead."
The girl's eyes shone with interest. "But that was luck!" she said.
"Oh, yes; it was luck of a sort--the damnable, unsatisfactory sort. I entered the Indian Army, and I've got on. But socially I'm practically an outcast. They're polite to me, but they leave me outside. The man who rose from the ranks--the fellow with a shady past--fought shy of by the women, just tolerated by the men, covertly despised by the youngsters--that's the sort of person I am. It galled me once. I'm used to it now."
Merryon's grim voice went into grimmer silence. He was staring sombrely into the fire, almost as if he had forgotten his companion.
There fell a pause; then, "You poor dear!" said the Dragon-Fly, sympathetically. "But I expect you are like that, you know. I expect it's a bit your own fault."
He looked at her in surprise.
"No, I'm not meaning anything nasty," she assured him, with that quick smile of hers whose sweetness he was just beginning to realize. "But after a bad knockout like yours a man naturally looks for trouble. He gets suspicious, and a snub or two does the rest. He isn't taking any more. It's a pity you're not married. A woman would have known how to hold her own, and a bit over--for you."
"I wouldn't ask any woman to share the life I lead," said Merryon, with bitter emphasis. "Not that any woman would if I did. I'm not a ladies' man."
She laughed for the first time, and he started at the sound, for it was one of pure, girlish merriment.
"My! You are modest!" she said. "And yet you don't look it, somehow." She turned her right-hand palm upwards on his knee, tacitly inviting his. "You're a good one to talk of life being worth while, aren't you?" she said.
He accepted the frank invitation, faintly smiling. "Well, I know the good things are there," he said, "though I've missed them."
"You'll marry and be happy yet," she said, with confidence. "But I shouldn't put it off too long if I were you."
He shook his head. His hand still half-consciously grasped hers. "Ask a woman to marry the son of one of the most famous swindlers ever known? I think not," he said. "Why, even you--" His eyes regarded her, comprehended her. He stopped abruptly.
"What about me?" she said.
He hesitated, possessed by an odd embarrassment. The dark eyes were lifted quite openly to his. It came to him that they were accustomed to the stare of multitudes--they met his look so serenely, so impenetrably.
"I don't know how we got on to the subject of my affairs," he said, after a moment. "It seems to me that yours are the most important just now. Aren't you going to tell me anything about them?"
She gave a small, emphatic shake of the head. "I should have been dead by this time if you hadn't interfered," she said. "I haven't got any affairs."
"Then it's up to me to look after you," Merryon said, quietly.
But she shook her head at that more vigorously still. "You look after me!" Her voice trembled on a note of derision. "Sure, you're joking!" she protested. "I've looked after myself ever since I was eight."
"And made a success of it?" Merryon asked.
Her eyes shot swift defiance. "That's nobody's business but my own," she said. "You know what I think of life."
Merryon's hand closed slowly upon hers. "There seems to be a pair of us," he said. "You can't refuse to let me help you--for fellowship's sake."
The red lips trembled suddenly. The dark eyes fell before his for the first time. She spoke almost under her breath. "I'm too old--to take help from a man--like that."
He bent slightly towards her. "What has age to do with it?"
"Everything." Her eyes remained downcast; the hand he held was trying to wriggle free, but he would not suffer it.
"Circumstances alter cases," he said. "I accepted the responsibility when I saved you."
"But you haven't the least idea what to do with me," said the Dragon-Fly,