The Lamp of Fate Part 38

An unhappy woman is very often a bitter one. And Magda had been slowly learning the meaning of unhappiness for the first time in her life--a life that had been hitherto roses and laurel all the way.

The devils that lie in wait for our weak moments prompted her then. The bitterness faded from her lips and they curved in a smile that subtly challenged the stern decision in Dan Storran's face. She hesitated an instant. Then, with feet that scarcely seemed to brush the gra.s.s, she glided forward, swaying, bending to some rhythmic measure, floating spirit-like across the lawn.

With a great cry Dan leaped to his feet and stared at her, transfixed.

At the sound of his voice she paused, poised on one bare foot, leaning a little towards him with curving, outstretched arms. Then, before he could touch her, she drew away, step by step, and Dan Storran, standing there in tense, breathless silence, beheld what no one else had ever seen--the Wielitzska dancing in the moonlight as she alone could dance.

He knew nothing of art, nor of the supreme technique which went to make each supple movement a thing of sheer perfection, instinct with rhythm and significance. But he was a man, and a man in love, fighting the strongest instincts of his nature; and the bewildering beauty of her as she danced, the languorous, ethereal allure, delicately sensuous as the fragrance of a La France rose, sent the hot blood rioting through his veins. . . . She was going--slowly retreating from him. The primal man in him, the innate hunter who took his mate by capture, swept him headlong. With a bound he sprang past the dusky shrubbery that hedged the lawn and overtook her, catching her in his arms. She did not struggle. He felt her yield, and strained the soft, panting body closer to him. Beneath his hand he could feel the hurrying beat of her heart.

Her breath, quickened by the exertion of the dance, came unevenly between her lips as she smiled at him.

"Do you still want me to go away, Dan Storran?"

There was a note of half-amused, half-triumphant mockery in her voice.

The last bonds that held him snapped suddenly: "Yes!" he cried hoa.r.s.ely.

"Yes, I do. To go away with me!"

He crushed his mouth down on hers, draining the sweetness of her in burning kisses he had thwarted through all these weeks that they had been together, pouring out his love in disjointed, stumbling phrases which halted by very reason of the force of pa.s.sion which evoked them.

Frightened by the tempest of emotion she had aroused she strained away from him. But she was powerless against his huge strength, helpless to resist him.

At length the fierce tensity of his grip relaxed, though his arms still clasped her.

"Tell me," he commanded triumphantly. "Tell me you love me. I want to hear it!" His voice vibrated and his eyes sought her face hungrily.

She summoned up all her forces to deny him--to deny him in such a manner that he should realise his mistake absolutely and at once. "But I don't!

I don't love you! If you thought that, you misunderstood me."

His hands released their hold of her and fell heavily to his sides.

"Misunderstood?" he muttered. The glad triumph went suddenly out of his voice. "Misunderstood?" he repeated dully.

"Yes. Misunderstood me altogether."

"I don't believe it!"

"But you _must_ believe it," she insisted. "It's the truth!"

He stared at her.

"Then what have you meant all these weeks?"

"I've not meant anything."

"It's a lie!" he gave back savagely. "Unless"--he came closer to her--"unless--is it that man, that d.a.m.ned foreigner, who was here to-day?"

"Antoine? No. Oh, Dan"--she forced an uncertain little laugh to her lips--"if you knew me better you'd know that I never _do_--'mean anything'!"

The bitter intonation in her voice--the gibe at her own poor ruins of love fallen about her--was lost on him. He was in total ignorance of her friends.h.i.+p with Quarrington. But the plain significance of her words came home to him clearly enough. He did not speak for a minute or two.

Then: "You've been playing with me, then--fooling me?" he said heavily.

Magda remained silent. The heavy, laboured speech seemed to hold something minatory in it--the sullen lowering which precedes a tempest.

"Answer me!" he persisted. "Was that it?"

"I--I suppose it was," she faltered.

He drew still closer and instinctively she shrank away. A consciousness of repressed violence communicated itself to her. She half expected him to strike her.

"And you don't love me? You're quite sure?"

There was an ominous kind of patience in the persistent questioning. It was as though he were deliberately giving her every possible chance to clear herself. Her nerves frayed a little.

"Of course I'm sure--perfectly sure," she said with nervous asperity. "I wish you'd believe me, Dan!"

"I only wanted to make sure," he returned.

Something in the careful precision of his answer struck her with a swift sense of apprehension. She looked up at him and what she saw made her catch her breath convulsively. His face was ashen, the veins in his forehead standing out like weals, and his eyes gleamed like blue flame--mad eyes. His hands, hanging at his sides, twitched curiously.

"I'm sure now," he said. "Sure. . . . Do you know what you've done?

You've smashed up my life. Smashed it. June and I were happy enough till you came. Now we'll never be happy again. I expect you've smashed other lives, too. But you won't do it any more. I'm the last. Women like you are better dead!"

His great arms swung out and gripped her.

"No, don't struggle. It wouldn't be any good, you know." He went on speaking very carefully and quietly, and while he spoke she felt his left arm tighten round her, binding her own arms down to her sides as might a thong, while his right hand slid up to the base of her throat.

She writhed, twisting her body desperately in his grip. "Keep still.

I've kissed you. And now I'm going to kill you. You'll be better dead."

There was implacable purpose in his strangely quiet, unhurried accents.

Magda recognised it--recognised that death was very close to her. It would be useless to scream. Before help could come--if anyone heard her cries, which was unlikely--Dan would have accomplished what he meant to do.

In the last fraction of time these thoughts flashed through her mind.

Her brain seemed to be working with abnormal clarity and speed. This was death, then--unavoidable, inevitable.

She felt Dan's hand creep upward, closing round her throat. Quite suddenly she ceased to struggle and lay still in his grasp. After all, she didn't know that she would much mind dying. Life was not so sweet.

There would be pain, she supposed . . . a moment's agony. . . .

All at once, Storran's hands fell away from her pa.s.sive, silent body and he stepped back. "I can't do it!" he muttered hoa.r.s.ely. "I can't do it!"

For a moment the suddenness of her release left Magda swaying dizzily on her feet. Then her brain clearing, she looked across to where Dan Storran's big figure faced her. The nonchalance with which she usually met life, and with which a few moments earlier she had been prepared to face inevitable death, stood by her now. A faint, quizzical smile tilted her mouth.

"So you couldn't do it after all, Dan?" The familiar note of half-indifferent mockery sounded in her voice.

Storran stared at her. "By G.o.d! I don't believe you are a woman!" he exclaimed thickly.

She regarded him contemplatively, her hands lightly touching the red marks scored by his fingers on the whiteness of her throat.

"Do you know," she replied dispa.s.sionately, "I sometimes wonder if I am?

I don't seem to have--feelings, like other women. It doesn't matter to me, really, a bit that I've--what was it you said?--smashed up your life. I don't know that it would have mattered much if you had strangled me." She paused, then stepped towards him. "Now you know the truth. Do you still want to kill me, Dan Storran! . . . Or may I go?"

He swung aside from her.