The Danger Mark Part 58

"You're only a girl, after all--you darling!" he said, inspecting her in an ecstacy of curiosity. "I wonder why I've been afraid of you for so long?--just because I love you!"

"You don't--you can't care for me that way----"

"I care for you in every kind of a way that anybody can care about anybody." She turned her shoulder, desperately striving to release herself, but she had not realised how tall and strong he was. "How small you are," he repeated wonderingly; "just a soft, slender girl, Kathleen.

I can't see how I ever came to let you make me study when I didn't want to."

"Scott, dear," she pleaded breathlessly, "you must let me go. This--this is utterly impossible----"

"What is?"

"That you and I can--could care--this way----"

"Don't you?"

"I--no!"

"Is that the truth, Kathleen?"

She looked up; the divine distress in her violet eyes sobered him, awed him for a moment.

"Kathleen," he said, "there are only a few years' difference between our ages. I feel older than you; you look younger than I--and you are all in the world I care for--or ever have cared for. Last spring--that night----"

"Hush, Scott," she begged, blus.h.i.+ng scarlet.

"I know you remember. That is when I began to love you. You must have known it."

She said nothing; the strain of her resisting arms against his breast had relaxed imperceptibly.

"What can a fellow say?" he went on a little wildly, checked at moments by the dryness of his throat and the rapid heartbeats that almost took his breath away when he looked at her. "I love you so dearly, Kathleen; there's no use in trying to live without loving you, for I couldn't do it!... I'm not really young; it makes me furious to think you consider me in that light. I'm a man, strong enough and old enough to love you--and make you love me! I _will_ make you!" His arms tightened.

She uttered a little cry, which was half a sob; his boyish roughness sent a glow rus.h.i.+ng through her. She fought against the peril of it, the bewildering happiness that welled up--fought against her heart that was betraying her senses, against the deep, sweet pa.s.sion that awoke as his face touched hers.

"Will you love me?" he said fiercely.

"No!"

"Will you?"

"Yes.... Let me go!" she gasped.

"Will you love me in the way I mean? Can you?"

"Yes. I do. I--have, long since.... Let me go!"

"Then--kiss me."

She looked up at him a moment, slowly put both arms around his neck: "Now," she breathed faintly, "release me."

And at the same instant he saw Geraldine descending the stairs.

Kathleen saw her, too; saw her turn abruptly, re-mount and disappear.

There was a moment's painful silence, then, without a word, she picked up her lace skirts, ran up the stairway, and continued swiftly on to Geraldine's room.

"May I come in?" She spoke and opened the door of the bedroom at the same time, and Geraldine turned on her, exasperated, hands clenched, dark eyes harbouring lightning:

"Have I gone quite mad, Kathleen, or have you?" she demanded.

"I think I have," whispered Kathleen, turning white and halting.

"Geraldine, you will _have_ to listen. Scott has told me that he loves me----"

"Is this the first time?"

"No.... It is the first time I have listened. I can't think clearly; I scarcely know yet what I've said and done. What must you think?... But won't you be a little gentle with me--a little forbearing--in memory of what I have been to you--to him--so long?"

"What do you wish me to think?" asked the girl in a hard voice. "My brother is of age; he will do what he pleases, I suppose. I--I don't know what to think; this has astounded me. I never dreamed such a thing possible----"

"Nor I--until this spring. I know it is all wrong; this is making me more fearfully unhappy every minute I live. There is nothing but peril in it; the discrepancy in our ages makes it hazardous--his youth, his overwhelming fortune, my position and means--the world will surely, surely misinterpret, misunderstand--I think even you, his sister, may be led to credit--what, in your own heart, you must know to be utterly and cruelly untrue."

"I don't know what to say or think," repeated Geraldine in a dull voice.

"I can't realise it; I thought that our affection for you was so--so utterly different."

She stared curiously at Kathleen, trying to reconcile what she had always known of her with what she now had to reckon with--strove to find some alteration in the familiar features, something that she had never before noticed, some new, unsuspected splendour of beauty and charm, some undetected and subtle allure. She saw only a wholesome, young, and lovely woman, fresh-skinned, slender, sweet, and graceful--the same companion she had always known and, as she remembered, unchanged in any way since the years of childhood, when Kathleen was twenty and she and her brother were ten.

"I suppose," she said, "that if Scott is in love with you, there is only one thing to do."

"There are several," said Kathleen in a low voice.

"Will you not marry him?"

"I don't know; I think not."

"Are you not in love with him?"

"Does that matter?" asked Kathleen steadily. "Scott's happiness is what is important."

"But his happiness, apparently, depends on you."

Kathleen flushed and looked at her curiously.

"Dear, if I knew that was so, I would give myself to him. Neither you nor he have ever asked anything of me in vain. Even if I did not love him--as I do--and he needed me, I would give myself to him. You and he have been all there was in life for me. But I am afraid that I may not always be all that life holds for him. He is young; he has had no chance yet; he has had little experience with women. I think he ought to have his chance."

She might have said the same thing of herself. A bride at her husband's death-bed, widowed before she had ever been a wife, what experience had she? All her life so far had been devoted to the girl who stood there confronting her, and to the brother. What did she know of men?--of whether she might be capable of loving some man more suitable? She had not given herself the chance. She never would, now.

There was no selfishness in Kathleen Severn. But there was much in the Seagrave twins. The very method of their bringing up inculcated it; they had never had any chance to be otherwise. The "cultiwation of the indiwidool" had driven it into them, taught them the deification of self, forced them to consider their own importance above anything else in the world.

And it was of that importance that Geraldine was now thinking as she sat on the edge of her bed, darkly considering these new problems that chance was laying before her one by one.

If Scott was going to be unhappy without Kathleen, it followed, as a matter of course, that he must have Kathleen. The chances Kathleen might take, what she might have to endure of the world's malice and gossip and criticism, never entered Geraldine's mind at all.