The Vision of Desire | Page 3

money to marry on, if it comes to that," he said at last, slowly. "Though we should certainly be comparatively poor. What you mean is that I'm not rich enough to satisfy you, I suppose?"
She nodded.
"Yes. I'm sick--sick of being poor! I've been poor all my life--always having to skimp and save and do things on the cheap--go without this and make shift with that. I'm tired of it! This last two months with Aunt Elvira--all this luxury and beauty," she gestured eloquently towards the villa standing like a gem in its exquisite Italian setting, "the car, the perfect service, as many frocks as I want--Oh! I've loved it all! And I can't give it up. I can't go back to being poor again!"
She paused, breathless, and her eyes, passionately upbraiding, beseeching understanding, sought his face.
"Don't you understand?" she added, twisting her hands together.
His eyes glinted.
"Yes, I'm beginning to," he returned briefly. "But how are you going to compass what you want--as a permanency? Your visit to Lady Templeton can't extend indefinitely."
She was silent, evading his glance. Her foot beat nervously on the flagged path where they stood.
"Is there some one else?" he asked incisively. "Another man--who can give you all these things?"
A dull, shamed red flushed her cheek. With an effort she forced herself to answer him.
"Yes," she said very low. "There is--some one else."
"I wonder if he realises his luck!"
The palpable sneer in his voice cut like a lash. She winced under it.
"One more question--I'd like to know the answer out of sheer curiosity." His voice was clear and hard--like ice, "You knew you were going to do this to me--last night?"
Her lips moved but no words came. She gestured mutely--imploringly.
"Answer me, please."
His implacable insistence whipped her into a sudden flare of defiance. She was like a cornered animal.
"Yes, then, if you must have it--I did know!" she flung at him in a low tone of furious anger.
Involuntarily he stepped back from her a pace, like a man suddenly smitten and stunned.
"While for me last night was sacred!" he muttered under his breath.
Before the utter scorn and repugnance in the low-breathed words her defiance crumbled to pieces.
"And for me, too! Eliot, I wasn't pretending. I do love you. I never meant you to know, but last night--I couldn't help it. I'd promised to marry the--the other man, and then you came, and we were alone--and--Oh!"--desperately, lifting a wrung face to his. "Why won't you understand?"
But the beautiful, imploring face failed to move him one jot. Something had died suddenly within him--the something that was young and eager and blindly trusting. When she ceased speaking he was only conscious that he wanted to take her and break her between his two hands--destroy her as he had destroyed the letter she had written. The blood was drumming in his temples. His hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically. She was so slender a thing that it would be very easy ... very easy with those iron muscles of his.... And then she would be dead. She was so beautiful and so rotten at the core that she would be better dead....
It was only by a supreme effort that he mastered his overwhelming need of some physical outlet for the passion of disgust and anger which swept him bare of any gentler emotion as the incoming tide sweeps the shore bare of sign or footprint. His body grew taut and rigid with the pressure he was putting on himself. When at last he spoke his voice was almost unrecognisable.
"I do understand," he said. "I understand thoroughly. You've made--everything--perfectly clear."
And with that he turned swiftly, leaving her standing alone in a flickering patch of shadow, and strode away across the grass. As he went, a little breeze ran through the garden, wafting the caressing, over-sweet perfume of heliotrope to his nostrils. It sickened him. He knew that he would loathe the scent of heliotrope henceforth.
CHAPTER I
ANN'S LEGACY
The sunshine romped down the Grand' Rue at Montricheux, flickering against the panes of the shop-windows and calling forth a hundred provocative points of light from the silver and jewels, the shining silks and embroidery, with which the shrewd Swiss shopkeeper seeks to open the purse of the foreigner. It seemed to chase the gaily blue-painted trams as they sped up and down the centre of the town, bestowing upon them a fictitious gala air, and danced tremulously on the round, shiny yellow tops of the tea-tables temptingly arranged on the pavement outside the pastrycook's.
It was still early afternoon, but already small groups of twos and threes were gathered round the little tables. At one a merry knot of English girl-tourists were enjoying an al fresco tea, at another staid Swiss habitués solemnly imbibed the sweet pink or yellow sirop which they infinitely preferred to tea, while a