The Vision of Desire | Page 3

It was fruit of some foolish
misunderstanding or shy feminine withdrawal, and he was here to
straighten it all out, to reassure her. But that word "interlude"! Had she
been deliberately playing with him after all? Women did such
things--sometimes. His features took on a sudden sternness.
"An interlude?" he repeated quietly. "I'm afraid I don't understand. Will
you explain?"
Her shoulders moved resentfully.
"Why do you want to force me into explanations?" she burst out.
"Surely--surely you understand? We can't marry--we haven't money

enough!"
There was a long pause before he spoke again.
"I've enough money to marry on, if it comes to that," he said at last,
slowly. "Though we should certainly be comparatively poor. What you
mean is that I'm not rich enough to satisfy you, I suppose?"
She nodded.
"Yes. I'm sick--sick of being poor! I've been poor all my life--always
having to skimp and save and do things on the cheap--go without this
and make shift with that. I'm tired of it! This last two months with Aunt
Elvira--all this luxury and beauty," she gestured eloquently towards the
villa standing like a gem in its exquisite Italian setting, "the car, the
perfect service, as many frocks as I want--Oh! I've loved it all! And I
can't give it up. I can't go back to being poor again!"
She paused, breathless, and her eyes, passionately upbraiding,
beseeching understanding, sought his face.
"Don't you understand?" she added, twisting her hands together.
His eyes glinted.
"Yes, I'm beginning to," he returned briefly. "But how are you going to
compass what you want--as a permanency? Your visit to Lady
Templeton can't extend indefinitely."
She was silent, evading his glance. Her foot beat nervously on the
flagged path where they stood.
"Is there some one else?" he asked incisively. "Another man--who can
give you all these things?"
A dull, shamed red flushed her cheek. With an effort she forced herself
to answer him.
"Yes," she said very low. "There is--some one else."

"I wonder if he realises his luck!"
The palpable sneer in his voice cut like a lash. She winced under it.
"One more question--I'd like to know the answer out of sheer
curiosity." His voice was clear and hard--like ice, "You knew you were
going to do this to me--last night?"
Her lips moved but no words came. She gestured mutely--imploringly.
"Answer me, please."
His implacable insistence whipped her into a sudden flare of defiance.
She was like a cornered animal.
"Yes, then, if you must have it--I did know!" she flung at him in a low
tone of furious anger.
Involuntarily he stepped back from her a pace, like a man suddenly
smitten and stunned.
"While for me last night was sacred!" he muttered under his breath.
Before the utter scorn and repugnance in the low-breathed words her
defiance crumbled to pieces.
"And for me, too! Eliot, I wasn't pretending. I do love you. I never
meant you to know, but last night--I couldn't help it. I'd promised to
marry the--the other man, and then you came, and we were
alone--and--Oh!"--desperately, lifting a wrung face to his. "Why won't
you understand?"
But the beautiful, imploring face failed to move him one jot. Something
had died suddenly within him--the something that was young and eager
and blindly trusting. When she ceased speaking he was only conscious
that he wanted to take her and break her between his two
hands--destroy her as he had destroyed the letter she had written. The
blood was drumming in his temples. His hands clenched and
unclenched spasmodically. She was so slender a thing that it would be

very easy ... very easy with those iron muscles of his.... And then she
would be dead. She was so beautiful and so rotten at the core that she
would be better dead....
It was only by a supreme effort that he mastered his overwhelming
need of some physical outlet for the passion of disgust and anger which
swept him bare of any gentler emotion as the incoming tide sweeps the
shore bare of sign or footprint. His body grew taut and rigid with the
pressure he was putting on himself. When at last he spoke his voice
was almost unrecognisable.
"I do understand," he said. "I understand thoroughly. You've
made--everything--perfectly clear."
And with that he turned swiftly, leaving her standing alone in a
flickering patch of shadow, and strode away across the grass. As he
went, a little breeze ran through the garden, wafting the caressing,
over-sweet perfume of heliotrope to his nostrils. It sickened him. He
knew that he would loathe the scent of heliotrope henceforth.
CHAPTER I
ANN'S LEGACY
The sunshine romped down the Grand' Rue at Montricheux, flickering
against the panes of the shop-windows and calling forth a hundred
provocative points of light from the