A Touch of Sun and Other Stories | Page 9

by their splendor of brows and lashes.
"It was very sweet of you to come," she said in a lifeless voice.
"Without an invitation! You did not expect me to be quite so sweet as that?"
Mrs. Thorne did not reply to this challenge. "You are not alone?" she asked gently.
"I am alone, dear Mrs. Thorne. I am everything I ought not to be. But you will not mind for an hour or two? It's a great deal to ask of you, this hot night, I know."
"You must not think of going back to-night." Mrs. Thorne glanced at the hired carriage from town. "Did you come on purpose, this dreadful weather, my dear? I am very stupid, but I've only just come myself."
"Oh, you are angelic! I heard at Colfax, as we were coming up, that you were at the mine. I came--by main strength. But I should have come somehow. Have you people staying with you? You look so very gay with your lights--you look like a whole community."
"We have no lights here, you see; we are anything but gay. We were talking of you only just now," Mrs. Thorne added infelicitously.
The other did not seem to hear her. She let her eyes rove down the lengths of empty piazza. The close-reefed awnings revealed the stars above the trees, dark and breezeless on the lawn. The matted rose-vines clung to the pillars motionless.
"What a strange, dear place!" she murmured. "And there is no one here?"
"No one at all. We are quite alone. We really must have you."
"I will stay, then. It's perfectly fearful, all I have to say to you. I shall tire you to death."
Ito, appearing, was ordered to send away the lady's carriage.
"May he bring me a glass of water? Just water, please." The tall girl, in her long black dress, moved to and fro, making a pretense of the view to escape observation.
"What is that sloping house that roars so? It sounds like a house of beasts. Oh, the stamps, of course! There goes one on the bare metal. Did anything break then?"
"Oh, no," said Mrs. Thorne; "things do not break so easily as that in a stamp-mill. Only the rock gets broken."
Ito returned with a tray of iced soda, and was spoken to aside by his mistress.
"It's quite a farce," she said, "preparing beds for our friends in this weather. No one sleeps until after two, and then it is morning; and though we shut out the heat, it beats on the walls and burns up the air inside, and we wake more tired than ever."
"Let us not think of sleep! I need all the night to talk in. I have to tell you impossible things."
"Is Willy's father to be included in this talk?" Mrs. Thorne inquired; "because he is coming--he is there, at the gate."
She rose uneasily. Her visitor rose, too, and together they watched the man's unconscious figure approaching. An electric lamp above the gate threw long shadows, like spokes of a wheel, across the grass. Mr. Thorne's face was invisible till he had reached the steps.
"Henry," said his wife, "you do not see we have a visitor."
He took off his hat, and perceiving a young lady, waved her a gallant and playful greeting, assuming her to be a neighbor. Miss Benedet stepped back without speaking.
"God bless me!" said Thorne simply, when his wife had named their guest, and so left the matter, for Miss Benedet to acknowledge or deny their earlier meeting.
Mrs. Thorne gave her little coughing laugh.
"Well, you two!" she said with ghastly gayety. "Must I repeat, Henry, that this is"--
"He is trying to think where he has seen me before," said Helen Benedet. There was a ring in her voice like that of the stamp-heads on the bare steel.
"I am wondering if you remember where you saw me before," Thorne retorted. He did not like the young lady's presence there. He thought it extraordinary and rather brazen. And he liked still less to be drawn into a woman's parlance.
Mrs. Thorne sat still, trembling. "Henry, tell her! Speak to her!"
Miss Benedet turned from husband to wife. Her face was very pale. "Ah," she said, "you knew about me all the time! He has told you everything--and you called me 'my dear'! Is it easy for you to say such things?"
"Never mind, never mind! What did you wish to say to me? What was it?"
"Give me a moment, please! This alters everything. I must get accustomed to this before we go any further."
She reached out her white arm with the thin sleeve wrinkled over it, and helped herself again to water. In every gesture there was the poise and distinction of perfect self-command, a highly wrought self-consciousness, as far removed from pose as from Nature's simplicity. Natural she could never be again. No woman is