The Lamp of Fate Part 17

"I'll let you go."

"Very well."

Slowly, reluctantly she lifted her face to his and kissed him. But the touch of her lips on his scattered the last vestige of his self-control.

"My beloved . . . Beloved!"

He seized her roughly in his arms. She felt his kisses overwhelming her, burning against her closed eyelids, bruising her soft mouth and throat.

"I love you . . . wors.h.i.+p you----"

"Let me go!" she cried shrilly, struggling against him. "Let me go--you promised it!"

He released her, drawing slowly back, his arms falling unwillingly away from her.

"Oh, yes," he muttered confusedly. "I did promise."

The instant she felt his grip relax, Magda sprang forward and switched on the centre burners, flooding the room with a blaze of light, and in the sudden glare she and Davilof stood staring silently at each other.

With the springing up of the lights it was as though a spell had broken.

The strained, hunted expression left Magda's face. She wasn't frightened any longer. Davilof was no more the man whose sudden pa.s.sion had surged about her, threatening to break down all defences and overwhelm her.

He was just Davilof, her accompanist, who, like half the men of her acquaintance, was more or less in love with her and who had overstepped the boundary which she had very definitely marked out between herself and him.

She regarded him stormily.

"Have you gone mad?" she asked contemptuously.

He returned her look, his eyes curiously brilliant. Then he laughed suddenly.

"Mad?" he said. "Yes, I think I _am_ mad. Mad with love for you!

Magda"--he came and stood close beside her--"don't send me away! Don't say you can't care for me! You don't love me now--but I could teach you." His voice deepened. "I love you so much. Oh, sweetest!--_Soul_ of me! Love is so beautiful. Let me teach you how beautiful it is!"

Magda drew back.

"No," she said. The brief negative fell clear and distinct as a bell.

"I won't take no," he returned hotly. "I won't take no. I want you.

Good G.o.d! Don't you understand? My love for you isn't just a boy's infatuation that you can dismiss with a word. It's all of me. I wors.h.i.+p you! Haven't I been with you day after day, worked with you, followed your every mood--shared your very soul with you? You're mine! Mine, because I understand you. You've shown me all you thought, all you felt.

You couldn't have done that if I hadn't meant something to you."

"Certainly you meant something to me. You meant an almost perfect accompanist. Why should you have imagined you meant more? I gave you no reason to think so."

"_No reason_?"

It was as though the two short words were the key which unlocked the floodgates of some raging torrent. Magda could never afterwards recall the words he used. She only knew they beat upon her with the cruel, lancinating sharpness of hail driven by the wind.

She had treated him much as other men, evoking the love of his ardent temperament by that subtle witchery which was second nature to her and which can be such a potent weapon in the hands of a woman whose own emotions remain untouched. And now the thwarted pa.s.sion of the lover and the savage anger of a man who felt himself deceived and duped broke over her in a resistless storm--an outburst so bitter and so trenchant that for the moment she remained speechless before it, buffeted into helpless, resentful silence. When he ceased, he had stripped her of every rag of feminine defence.

"Have you finished?" she asked in a stifled voice.

She made no attempt to palliate matters or to refute anything he had said. In his present frame of mind it would have been useless pointing out to him that she had treated him no differently from other men. He was a Pole, and he had caught fire where others would merely have glowed smoulderingly.

"Yes," he rejoined sullenly. "I've finished."

"So much the better."

He regarded her speculatively.

"What are you made of, I wonder? Does it mean nothing to you that a man has given you his very best--all that he has?"

She appeared to reflect a moment.

"I'm afraid it doesn't. There's only one thing really means much to me--and that is my art. And Lady Arabella," she added after a pause.

"She'll always mean a good deal."

She sat down by the fire and held out her hands to its warmth. The slender fingers seemed almost transparent, glowing rosily in the firelight. Davilof turned to go.

"Good-bye, then," he said curtly.

"Good-bye." Magda nodded indifferently. Then, carelessly: "I shall want you to-morrow, Davilof--same time."

He swung round.

"I will never play for you again. Did you imagine I should?"

She smiled at him--that slow, subtle smile of hers with its hint of mockery.

"You won't be able to keep away," she replied.

"I will never play for you again," he repeated. "Never! I will teach myself to hate you."

She shook her head lightly.

"Impossible, Davilof."

"It's not impossible. There's very little difference between love and hate--sometimes. And I want all or nothing."

"I'm afraid it must be nothing, then."

"We shall see. But if I can't have you, _I_ swear no other man shall!"

She glanced up at him, lifting her brows a little.

"Aren't you going too far, Antoine? You can hate me, if you like, or love me--it's a matter of indifference to me which you do. But I don't propose to allow you to arrange my life for me. And in any case"--after a moment--"I'm not likely to fall in love--with you or anyone else."

"You think not?" He stood looking down at her sombrely. "You'll fall in love right enough some day. And when you do it will be all or nothing with you, too. You're that kind. Love will take you--and break you, Magda."

He spoke slowly, with an odd kind of tensity. To Magda it seemed almost as if his quiet speech held the gravity of prophecy, and she s.h.i.+vered a little.