The Salamander Part 59

"I am going to let you choose, Miss Dodo, so that you may be sure"--he paused, and added with slow silky emphasis--"to get just what you want!"

"Oh, that's very nice!" she said, with a nod, a little intrigued at the suggestion in his voice, very curious to see what he would offer her.

Between them she was always conscious of move and countermove. Would he take this moment to make another overt advance, after these long weeks of acquiescence to her whims? Just how much did this infatuation and pursuit mean to him, translated into dollars? She sat down, keenly interested, holding out her hand.

"First, please!"

He laid a red plush box on her eager palm, slowly, delaying a moment _en connaisseur_, to appreciate the delicate wrist and the sh.e.l.l-pink fragile shades of the finger-tips.

"It's a ring, a valuable ring, to tempt me!" she thought, smiling wisely to herself. She opened the box--immensely surprised. Inside was a tiny watch bracelet in gold and enamel, rare in design, but quite modest as an offering from him.

She slipped it on her wrist, nodding appreciatively, choosing her words carefully.

"How cunning! What a dear little watch! How clever of you!"

"Wait!" He leaned forward, offering the other box. "There is a choice, you know!"

She pressed the spring, and remained staring, caught by surprise.

Against a background of royal blue, a necklace of pearls met her eyes, luminous and humanly, nakedly beautiful--a necklace such as once she had stood before on Fifth Avenue, breathless with desire, coveting each pearl that lay like a rare and perfectly beautiful nymph asleep against the lawn. The choice! She understood the cruel cleverness of it now. She shut the cover quickly, afraid to let her fingers know the delight of such a caress. Then she raised her eyes steadily to his keen scrutiny.

"You ran no risk!" she said scornfully.

"Take it! I ask nothing!" he said quietly.

"Then why offer it?"

"That you may understand my nature," he said in a lower voice--"how I am when I care!"

"You know I could not honestly take such a present!"

"Why not? You have warned me!" he still persisted.

"I think such a woman is worse than one who pays," she said disdainfully, and with an angry motion she pushed the box from her, rising.

"Miss Baxter," he said, with studied courtesy, putting the necklace back into his pocket, "it was bought for you; it will be waiting for you."

"Ah, that's what you've been leading up to!" she said sharply, a note of anger in her voice; for the love of the jewels had left an ache.

"Yes," he said frankly; "but they are yours--whenever you ask."

"Why don't you say what you want to say, Mr. Sa.s.soon? Are you so afraid of me?" she said, looking him directly in the eyes.

"Perhaps!" he answered, pulling at his mustache. "And yet, we may as well be open, hadn't we?"

She studied him a moment, and then resumed her seat, making him a peremptory sign to continue.

"It is difficult to express, perhaps," he said--without, however, any trouble showing in his even tones. He paused and looked at his hand, stroking it with the feline motion of his fingers. Then all at once he began:

"Miss Baxter, I have been careful to follow the laws of the game you laid down, haven't I? I have taken care not to offend you by word or action, haven't I?"

"Well?"

"Will you let me say this to you, little girl?" he said, finding all at once his note. "You are going to make up your mind very soon what you want in life. You are too clever to wait long. Now, to be quite fair, as you pride yourself in being, you know who I am, and you know what I want. Yet you are willing to see me, knowing that!"

She took off the bracelet immediately.

"I have not the slightest interest whether I see you or not!" she said coldly. "To be honest, I only care to annoy you, to pay you back for your impertinence at your luncheon, to teach you a lesson that every woman is not for sale--in a word, to humiliate you as much as I can!"

He did not receive this in anger--far from it: his eyes took on a sudden eagerness, an avidity that he had hitherto controlled.

"Are you sure that is quite the truth--all the truth?" he asked, smiling his heavy ironical smile. "Are you sure you haven't been a little curious to know what this might mean, before you reject it? No, don't fib!" he said quietly, as she turned. "Is there anything unnatural--extraordinary in that? Don't you think such ideas come into the minds of most women? If you are going in for a career, you know what you must face! This world is a ridiculous world; laws are made to crush petty offenders! If you allied your name to a little manager, every one would scorn you!"

"And if I were your mistress, Mr. Sa.s.soon? Say the word!"

"If you were, with your cleverness," he said quietly, "you would be received wherever I wanted you to be received: more, you would be sought, courted, flattered by those who want something out of me. Or, if you wanted a career, every obstacle would disappear at one word! Ask any one, if you want to know the truth of what I say. That's the world, young lady." He checked himself. "I don't want to talk over that--now!

You asked me a direct question. This is my answer. Accept me for what I am--considering me as a possibility. It's worth it; be sure that it is a bigger field than a marriage of drudgery that ends your liberty.

Consider me carefully, simply as an abstract proposition! Meanwhile, give me credit for being quite submissive and obedient!"

She remained thoughtful, surprised at the keenness of his insight, feeling she had underestimated him, feeling, too, the dramatic opposition of herself, little wandering atom of mediocrity and the great powers of wealth that could impress her so convincingly out of the time-worn eyes of this bored man.

"What are you thinking of, pretty child?" he said, struck at her glance.

"It is only because you can't have me!" she said abruptly.

"Because you don't care for what other women do!" he said quickly.

"Because I am tired--eternally tired--of women who fling themselves at me! Because you make me follow you. Listen! You won't believe me--it's true. You can do anything you want with me!"

"Harrigan Blood offers me himself!" she said maliciously, for she began to have the same instinct with him as she had with Ma.s.singale, to whip him out of his calm into a fury.

"Blood!" he said angrily. "Child, you would hold a man like that three months. He would devour you, crush you. That type only feeds on women!

You think I don't care! Do you know that just because you turned up in my life I've broken with Blood--that we are fighting each other tooth and nail, that I've caught him in the market, and will wring him for forty or fifty thousand for daring to get in my path!"

"And he?" she cried, delighted.

He noticed the joy in her, the childish delight of mischief, which reckoned great disasters as a broken vase.

"Little devil! That's what I like in you!" he said, with a flash of his eyes. "Blood is hammering me tooth and nail. He'll put me back three years, perhaps, tie me up and cost me a million or two more. But that's all the good it'll do him! Well, are you pleased?"

"Yes, I like that!"

"And which is it to be?"

"The bracelet, please!"

He laughed, fastening it on her arm, taking no advantage.

"You see how domesticated I am!"

"You behave very well!"