The Firing Line

"Are you challenging me? Because I am likely to take you into my arms at any moment if you are."

"Not here—Garry!"—looking up in quick concern, for his recklessness at times dismayed her. Considering him doubtfully she made up her mind that she was safe, and her little chin went up in defiance.

"The hammock's in the patio," he said.

"There's moonlight there, too. No, thank you—with Cissy wakeful and her windows commanding every nook!… Besides—as I told you, I've been thinking."

"And what have you concluded?"

Delicate straight nose in the air, eyebrows arched in airy disdain, she stood preoccupied with some little inward train of thought that alternately made grave and gay the upcurled corners of her lips.

"About this question of—ah—love-making—" dropping her eyes in pretence of humility.

"It is no longer a question, you know."

She would not look up; her lashes seemed to rest on the bloom of the rounded cheek as though the lids were shut, but there came from the shadows between the lids a faint glimmer; and he thought of that first day when from her lifted gaze a thousand gay little demons seemed to laugh at him.

"I've been thinking," she remarked, "that this question of making love to me should be seriously discussed."

"That's what I've been asking you to do in the patio—"

"I've been thinking, with deep but rather tardy concern, that it is not the best policy for me to be—courted—any more."

She glanced up; her entire expression had suddenly altered to a gravity unmistakable.

"What has happened?" he asked.

"Can you tell me? I ask you, Garry, what has happened?"

"I don't understand—"

"Nor I.... Because that little fool you kissed—so many, many centuries ago—is not this disillusioned woman who is standing here!… May I be a little bit serious with you?"

"Of course," he said, amused; "come out on the east balcony and tell me what troubles you."

She considered him, smilingly suspicious of his alacrity.

"I don't think we had better go to the balcony." "Shiela, can't you ever get over being ashamed when I make love to you?"

"I don't want to get over it, Garry."

"Are you still afraid to let me love you?"

Her mouth curved gravely as a perplexed child's; she looked down at the table where his sun-burnt hand now lay lightly across hers.

"I wished to speak to you about myself—if, somehow you could help me to say what—what is very difficult for a girl to say to a man—even when she loves him.... I don't think I can say it, but I'll try."

"Then if you'll come to the balcony—"

"No, I can't trust you—or myself—unless we promise each other."

"Have I got to do that again?"

"Yes, if I am to go with you. I promise! Do you?"

"If I must," he said with very bad grace—so ungraciously in fact that as they passed from the eastern corridor on to the Spanish balcony she forgot her own promise and slipped her hand into his in half-humourous, half-tender propitiation.

"Are you going to be disagreeable to me, Garry?"

"You darling!" he said; and, laughing, yet secretly dismayed at her own perversion, she hurriedly untwisted her fingers from his and made a new and fervid promise to replace the one just broken.

The moonlight was magnificent, silvering forest, dune, and chaparral. Far to the east a thin straight gleam revealed the sea.

She seated herself under the wall, lying back against it; he lay extended on the marble shelf beside her, studying the moonlight on her face.

"What was it you had to tell me, Shiela? Remember I am going in the morning."

"I've turned cowardly; I cannot tell you.... Perhaps later.... Look at the Seminole moon, Garry. They have such a pretty name for it in March—Tau-sau-tchusi—'Little Spring Moon'! And in May they call it the 'Mulberry Moon'—Kee-hassi, and in November it is a charming name—Hee-wu-li—'Falling Leaf Moon'!—and August is Hyothlucco—'Big Ripening Moon.' … Garry, this moonlight is filling my veins with quicksilver. I feel very restless, very heathenish." … She cast a slanting side-glance at him, lips parting with soundless laughter; and in the witchery of the moon she seemed exquisitely unreal, head tipped back, slender throat and shoulders snow-white in the magic lustre that enveloped them.

Resting one bare arm on the marble she turned, chin on shoulder, looking mischievously down at him, lovely, fresh, perfect as the Cherokee roses that spread their creamy, flawless beauty across the wall behind her.

Imperceptibly her expression changed to soft friendliness, to tenderness, to a hint of deeper emotion; and her lids drooped a little, then opened gravely under the quick caress of his eyes; and very gently she moved her head from side to side as reminder and refusal.

"Another man's wife," she said deliberately.... "Thy neighbour's wife.... That's what we've done!"

Like a cut of a whip her words brought him upright to confront her, his blood tingling on the quick edge of anger.

For always, deep within him, lay that impotent anger latent; always his ignorance of this man haunted him like the aftermath of an ugly dream. But of the man himself she had never spoken since that first day in the wilderness. And then she had not named him.

Her face had grown very serious, but her eyes remained unfathomable under his angry gaze.

"Is there any reason to raise that spectre between us?" he demanded.

"Dear, has it ever been laid?" she asked sorrowfully.

The muscles in his cheeks tightened and his eyes narrowed unpleasantly. Only the one feature saved the man from sullen commonness in his suppressed anger—and that was his boyish mouth, clean, sweet, nobly moulded, giving the lie to the baffled brutality gleaming in the eyes. And the spark died out as it had come, subdued, extinguished when he could no longer sustain the quiet surprise of her regard.

"How very, very young you are after all," she said gently. "Come nearer. Lift your sulky, wicked head. Now ask my pardon for not understanding."

"I ask it.... But when you speak of him—"

"Hush. He is only a shadow to you—scarcely more to me. He must remain so. Do you not understand that I wish him to remain a shadow to you—a thing without substance—without a name?"

He bent his head, nodding almost imperceptibly.

"Garry?"

He looked up in response.