The Yellow Dove. Gibbs George

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СКАЧАТЬ are good and bad pictures—objects of virtue, excessively ugly–”

      “Objects of virtue are usually excessively ugly, especially if they are women.”

      “Thanks,” said Doris. “You’re most flattering. There’s something in the air of Scotland that makes one tell the truth.”

      He laughed. “If Scotland is as merciless as that, I shall be off in the morning. I could imagine no worse purgatory than a place in which one always tells the truth. Lying is one of the highest arts of a mature civilization. I haven’t the slightest notion, nor have you, that either of us means a thing he says. We were all born to deceive—some of us do it in one way, some in another, but we all do it to the very best of our bent. For instance, you said a while ago that it was agreeable for you to see me. But I’m quite sure, you know, that it wasn’t.”

      “It isn’t agreeable if you’re going to be horrid and cynical. Why shouldn’t I be glad to see you? You always stimulate my intelligence even if you don’t flatter it.”

      The others had moved on to the library and they had the room to themselves.

      “I don’t see how I could flatter it more than I have already done,” he said in a low tone of voice.

      She raised her chin a trifle and peered at him slantwise.

      “Do you think that you flatter it now when you recall the mistakes of my past?”

      He searched her face keenly but her blue eyes met his gaze steadily. She was smiling up at him guilelessly.

      “A mistake—of course,” he said slowly. “You are young enough to afford to make mistakes. But I am old enough to wish that it hadn’t been made at my expense.”

      “You still care?” she asked.

      “I do.”

      “If I hadn’t thought that you wanted me for your collection–”

      “You are cruel–”

      “No. I know. You wanted me for your portrait harem, and I should have been frightfully jealous of the Coningsby Venus. I couldn’t compete with that sort of thing, you know.”

      He smiled at her admiringly and went on in a low tone.

      “You know why I wanted you then, and why I want you now—because you’re the cleverest woman in England, and the most courageous.”

      “It took courage to refuse the hand of John Rizzio.”

      “It takes more courage in John Rizzio to hear those words from the lips that refused him.”

      She laid her hand gently on his arm.

      “I am sorry,” she said.

      He bent his head and kissed her fingers.

      “It is not the Coningsby Venus who is essential to my happiness,” he whispered. “It’s the Doris Diana.”

      She laughed.

      “That’s the disillusionment of possession.”

      “No. The only disillusionments of life are its failures—I got the Venus by infinite patience. The Diana–” He paused and drew in his breath.

      “You think that you may get the Diana by patience also?” she asked quietly.

      He looked at her with a gaze that seemed to pierce all her subterfuges.

      “I waited for the Coningsby Venus,” he said in measured tones, “until the man who possessed her—was dead.”

      She started, and the color left her cheeks.

      “You mean—Cyril?” she stammered.

      “I mean,” he replied urbanely, “precisely nothing—except that I will never give you up.”

      She recovered her poise with an effort, and when she replied she was smiling gayly.

      “I’m not at all sure that I want to be given up,” she said, with a laugh that was meant to relax the tension. “You are, after all, one of the best friends I have.”

      “I hope that nothing may ever happen to make you think otherwise.”

      Was this a threat? She glanced at him keenly as she quoted:

      “‘Friendship is constant in all other things save in the office and affairs of love.’ May I trust you?”

      “Try me.”

      “No, I might put you to a test that would be difficult.”

      “Try me.”

      “Very well, I will. Go back to London in the morning.”

      He looked at her and laughed.

      “Why?”

      “It will be easier for you to be patient there than here–”

      “When Hammersley comes?”

      “Oh,” she said quickly, “then he is coming?”

      “I don’t know why he shouldn’t,” he said slowly.

      There was a pause.

      “Shall you go?”

      “To London? I’ll think about it.”

      “There! You see? You refuse my first request.”

      “I would like to know your purpose.”

      “I think you know it already,” she put in quickly. “You want something that I cannot give you—something that is not mine to give.”

      She had come out into the open defiantly and he met her challenge with a laugh.

      “Because it is Hammersley’s?” he said. “You think so and Hammersley thinks so, and possession is nine points of the law. But I will contest.”

      “Your visit is vain. Go back to London, my friend.”

      “I find it pleasanter here.”

      “Then you refuse?”

      “I must.”

      “Then it is war between us.”

      “If you will have it so,” he said, with an inclination of the head. Doris put her foot on the fender and leaned with her hands upon her knee for a moment as though in deep thought. Then she turned toward the door.

      “Come,” she said coolly. “Let us join the others.”

      There was a relief in the thought that at least they had come to an understanding and that the matter of the possession of the papers had at last become a private contest between them. She had brought the interview to an end not because she was afraid to continue it but because she wanted to think of a plan to disarm him. She felt that she was СКАЧАТЬ