The Tempting of Tavernake | Page 2

rather more thick black hair than he knew
how to arrange advantageously. He wore a shirt which was somewhat
frayed, and an indifferent tie; his boots were heavy and clumsy; he
wore also a suit of ready-made clothes with the air of one who knew
that they were ready-made and was satisfied with them. People of a
nervous or sensitive disposition would, without doubt, have found him
irritating but for a certain nameless gift--an almost Napoleonic
concentration upon the things of the passing moment, which was in
itself impressive and which somehow disarmed criticism.
"About that bracelet!" he said at last.
She moved her head and looked at him. A young man of less assurance
would have turned and fled. Not so Tavernake. Once sure of his ground
he was immovable. There was murder in her eyes but he was not even
disturbed.
"I saw you take it from the little table by the piano, you know," he
continued. "It was rather a rash thing to do. Mrs. Fitzgerald was
looking for it before I reached the stairs. I expect she has called the
police in by now."
Slowly her hand stole into the depths of her pocket and emerged.
Something flashed for a moment high over her head. The young man
caught her wrist just in time, caught it in a veritable grip of iron. Then,
indeed, the evil fires flashed from her eyes, her teeth gleamed white,
her bosom rose and fell in a storm of angry, unuttered sobs. She was
dry-eyed and still speechless, but for all that she was a tigress. A
strangely-cut silhouette they formed there upon the housetops, with a
background of empty sky, their feet sinking in the warm leads.
"I think I had better take it," he said. "Let go."
Her fingers yielded the bracelet--a tawdry, ill-designed affair of rubies
and diamonds. He looked at it disapprovingly.

"That's an ugly thing to go to prison for," he remarked, slipping it into
his pocket. "It was a stupid thing to do, anyhow, you know. You
couldn't have got away with it--unless," he added, looking over the
parapet as though struck with a sudden idea, "unless you had a
confederate below."
He heard the rush of her skirts and he was only just in time. Nothing, in
fact, but a considerable amount of presence of mind and the full
exercise of a strength which was continually providing surprises for his
acquaintances, was sufficient to save her. Their struggles upon the very
edge of the roof dislodged a brick from the palisading, which went
hurtling down into the street. They both paused to watch it, his arms
still gripping her and one foot pressed against an iron rod. It was
immediately after they had seen it pitch harmlessly into the road that a
new sensation came to this phlegmatic young man. For the first time in
his life, he realized that it was possible to feel a certain pleasurable
emotion in the close grasp of a being of the opposite sex. Consequently,
although she had now ceased to struggle, he kept his arms locked
around her, looking into her face with an interest intense enough, but
more analytical than emotional, as though seeking to discover the
meaning of this curious throbbing of his pulses. She herself, as though
exhausted, remained quite passive, shivering a little in his grasp and
breathing like a hunted animal whose last hour has come. Their eyes
met; then she tore herself away.
"You are a hateful person," she said deliberately, "a hateful, interfering
person. I detest you."
"I think that we will go down now," he replied.
He raised the trap-door and glanced at her significantly. She held her
skirts closely together and passed through it without looking at him.
She stepped lightly down the ladder and without hesitation descended
also a flight of uncarpeted attic stairs. Here, however, upon the landing,
she awaited him with obvious reluctance.
"Are you going to send for the police?" she asked without looking at
him.

"No," he answered.
"Why not?"
"If I had meant to give you away I should have told Mrs. Fitzgerald at
once that I had seen you take her bracelet, instead of following you out
on to the roof."
"Do you mind telling me what you do propose to do, then?" she
continued still without looking at him, still without the slightest note of
appeal in her tone.
He withdrew the bracelet from his pocket and balanced it upon his
finger.
"I am going to say that I took it for a joke," he declared.
She hesitated.
"Mrs. Fitzgerald's sense of humor is not elastic," she warned him.
"She will be very angry, of course," he assented, "but she will not
believe that I meant to steal it."
The girl moved