The Tracer of Lost Persons Part 27

"That's true," he said seriously.

There was a silence. Her nerves seemed to trouble her, for she began to pace to and fro in front of the pa.s.sageway where he sat comfortably on his chair, arms folded, one knee dropped over the other.

The light being behind her he could not as yet distinguish her features very clearly. Her figure was youthful, slender, yet beautifully rounded; her head charming in contour. He watched her restlessly walking on the floor, small hand clutching the pistol resting on her hip.

The ruddy burnished glimmer on the edges of her hair he supposed, at first, was caused by the strong light behind her.

"This is atrocious!" she murmured, halting to confront him. "How dared you sever every electric connection in my house?"

As she spoke she stepped backward a pace or two, resting herself for a moment against the footboard of the bed--full in the gaslight. And he saw her face.

For a moment he studied her; an immense wave of incredulity swept over him--of wild unbelief, slowly changing to the astonishment of dawning conviction. Astounded, silent, he stared at her from his shadowy corner; and after a while his pulses began to throb and throb and hammer, and the clamoring confusion of his senses seemed to deafen him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'This is atrocious,' she murmured, halting to confront him."]

She rested a moment or two against the footboard of the bed, her big gray eyes fixed on his vague and shadowy form.

"This won't do," she said.

"No," he said, "it won't do."

He spoke very quietly, very gently. She detected the alteration in his voice and started slightly, as though the distant echo of a familiar voice had sounded.

"What did you say?" she asked, coming nearer, pistol glittering in advance.

"I said 'It won't do.' I don't know what I meant by it. If I meant anything I was wrong. It _will_ do. The situation is perfectly agreeable to me."

"Insolence will not help you," she said sharply. And under the sharpness he detected the slightest quaver of a new alarm.

"I am going to free myself," he said coolly.

"If you move I shall certainly shoot!" she retorted.

"I am going to move--but only my lips. I have only to move my lips to free myself."

"I should scarcely advise you to trust to your eloquence. I have been duly warned, you see."

"Who warned you?" he asked curiously. And, as she disdained to reply: "Never mind. We can clear that up later. Now let me ask you something."

"You are scarcely in a position to ask questions," she said.

"May I not speak to you?"

"Is it necessary?"

He thought a moment. "No, not necessary. Nothing is in this life, you know. I thought differently once. Once--when I was younger--six years younger--I thought happiness was necessary. I found that a man might live without it."

She stood gazing at him through the shadows, pistol on hip.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean that happiness is not necessary to life. Life goes on all the same. My life has continued for six years without that happiness which some believe to be essential."

After a silence she said: "I can tell by the way you speak that you are well born. I--I dread to do what I simply must do."

He, too, sat silent a long time--long enough for an utterly perverse and whimsical humor to take complete possession of him.

"_Won't_ you let me go--_this_ time?" he pleaded.

"I cannot."

"You had better let me go while you can," he said, "because, perhaps, you may find it difficult to get rid of me later."

Affronted, she shrank back from the doorway and stood in the center of her room, angry, disdainful, beautiful, under the ruddy glory of her l.u.s.trous hair.

His perverse mood changed, too; he leaned forward, studying her minutely--the splendid gray eyes, the delicate mouth and nose, the full, sweet lips, the witchery of wrist and hand, and the flowing, rounded outline of limb and body under the pretty gown. Could this be _she_?

This lovely, mature woman, wearing scarcely a trace of the young girl he had never forgotten--scarcely a trace save in the beauty of her eyes and hair--save in the full, red mouth, sweet and sensitive even in its sudden sullenness?

"Once," he said, and his voice sounded to him like voices heard in dreams--"once, years and years ago, there was a steamer, and a man and a young girl on board. Do you mind my telling you about it?"

She stood leaning against the footboard of the bed, not even deigning to raise her eyes in reply. So he made the slightest stir in his chair; and then she looked up quickly enough, pistol poised.

"The steamer," said Kerns slowly, "was coming into Southampton--six years ago. On deck these two people stood--a man of twenty-eight, a girl of eighteen--six years ago. The name of the steamer was the _Carnatic_.

Did you ever hear of that s.h.i.+p?"

She was looking at him attentively. He waited for her reply; she made none; and he went on.

"The man had asked the girl something--I don't know what--I don't know why her gray eyes filled with tears. Perhaps it was because she could not do what the man asked her to do. It may have been to love him; it may have been that he was asking her to marry him and that she couldn't.

Perhaps that is why there were tears in her eyes--because she may have been sorry to cause him the pain of refusal--sorry, perhaps, perhaps a little guilty. Because she must have seen that he was falling in love with her, and she--she let him--knowing all the time that she was to marry another man. Did you ever hear of that man before?"

She had straightened up, quivering, wide eyed, lips parted. He rose and walked slowly into her room, confronting her under the full glare of light.

Her pistol fell clattering to the floor. It did not explode because it was not loaded.

"Now," he said unsteadily, "will you give me my freedom? I have waited for it--not minutes--but years--six years. I ask it now--the freedom I enjoyed before I ever saw you. Can you give it back to me? Can you restore to me a capacity for happiness? Can you give me a heart to love with--love some woman, as other men love? Is it very much I ask of you--to give me a chance in life--the chance I had before I ever saw you?"

Her big gray eyes seemed fascinated; he looked deep into them, smiling; and she turned white.

"Will you give me what I ask?" he said, still smiling.

She strove to speak; she could not, but her eyes never faltered.

Suddenly the color flooded her neck and cheeks to the hair, and the quick tears glimmered.

"I--I did not understand; I was too young to be cruel," she faltered.

"How could I know what I was doing? Or what--what you did?"

"I? To _you_?"