Madcap. George Gibbs

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СКАЧАТЬ mine—" finished Olga quietly, "you needn't go on." The calmness of her tone only brought its bitterness into higher relief. Markham stopped, turned and caught both her hands in his.

      "No, not yours, Olga. God knows I didn't mean that. You're not their kind, soulless, cynical, selfish and narrow social parasite who poison what they fee don and live in the idleness that better men and women have bought for them. Call them your crowd if you like. I know better. You've only taken people as you've found them—taken life as it was planned for you—moved along the line of least resistance because you'd never been taught that there was any other way to go. In Europe you never had a chance to learn—"

      "That's it," she broke in passionately, "I never had a chance—not a chance."

      Her fingers clutched his and then quickly released them.

      "Oh, what's the use?" she went on in a stifled tone. "Why couldn't you have let me live on, steeped in my folly? It's too late for me to change. I can't. I'm pledged. If I gamble, keep late hours, and do all the things that this set does it's because if I didn't I should die of thinking. What does it matter to any one but me?"

      She stopped and rose with a sudden gesture of anger.

      "Don't preach, John. I'm not in the humor for it—not to-night—do you hear?"

      He looked up at her in surprise. One of her hands was clenched on the balustrade and her dark eyes regarded him scornfully.

      "I've made you angry? I'm sorry," he said.

      The tense lines of her figure suddenly relaxed as she leaned against the pergola and then laughed up at the sky.

      "Would you preach to the stars, John Markham? They're a merry congregation. They're laughing at you—as I am. A sermon by moonlight with only the stars and a scoffer to listen!"

      Her mockery astonished and bewildered him. His indictment of those with whom she affiliated was no new thing in their conversations, and he knew that what he had said was true.

      "I'm sorry I spoke," he muttered.

      She laughed at him again and threw out her arms toward the moonlit sea.

      "What a night for the moralities—for the ashes of repentance! I ask a man into the rose-garden to make love to me and he preaches to me instead—preaches to me! of the world, the flesh and the devil, par exemple! Was ever a pretty woman in a more humiliating position!"

      She approached him again and leaned over him, the strands of her hair brushing his temples, her voice whispering mockingly just at his ear.

      "Oh, la la! You make such a pretty lover, John. If I could only paint you in your sackcloth and ashes, I should die in content. What is it like, mon ami, to feel like moralizing in a rose-garden by moonlight? What do they tell you—the roses? Of the dull earth from which they come? Don't they whisper of the kisses of the night winds, of the drinking of the dew—of the mad joy of living—the sweetness of dying? Or don't they say anything to you at all—except that they are merely roses, John?"

      She brushed the blossom in her fingers lightly across his lips and sprang away from him. But it was too late. She had gone too far and she realized it in a moment; for thought she eluded him once, he caught her in his arms and kissed her roughly on the lips.

      "You'd mock at me, would you?" he cried.

      She struggled in his arms and then lay inert. She deserved this revenge she knew, but not the carelessness of these kisses of retribution, each of them merciless with the burden of her awakening.

      "Let me go, John," she said faintly. "You must not—"

      "Not yet. I'm no man of stone. Can you scoff now?"

      "No, no. Let me go. I've paid you well and you—O God! you've paid me, too. Let me go."

      "Not until you kiss me."

      "No—not that."

      "Why?" he whispered.

      "No—never that! Oh, the damage you have done!"

      "I'll repair it—"

      "No. You can't bring the dead to life——our friendship——it was so clean——Let me go, do you hear?"

      But he only laughed at her.

      "You'll kiss me—"

      "Never!"

      "You shall—"

      "Never!"

      He raised her face to his. She quivered under his touch, but her lips were insensate, and upon his hand a drop of moisture fell—a tear limpid, pure from the hidden springs of the spirit. He kissed its piteous course upon her cheek.

      "Olga!" he whispered softly. "What have I done?"

      "Killed something in me—I think—something gentle and noble that was trying so hard to live—"

      "Forgive me," he stammered. "I didn't know you cared so much."

      She started in his arms, then slowly released herself, and drew away while with an anxious gaze he followed her.

      "Our friendship—I cared for that more than anything else in the world," she said simply.

      "It shall be stronger," he began.

      "No—friendship does not thrive on kisses."

      "Love—" he began. But her quick gesture silenced him.

      "Love, boy! What can you know of love!"

      "Nothing. Teach me!"

      She looked up into his face, her hands upon his shoulders holding him at arm's length, flushed with her empty victory—ice-cold with self contempt at the means she had used to accomplish it. Another man—a man of her own world—would have played the game as she had played it, mistrusting the tokens she had shown and taking her coquetry at its worldly value; would have kissed and perhaps forgotten the next morning. But as she looked in Markham's eyes she saw with dismay that he still read her heart correctly and that the pact of truthfulness which neither of them had broken was considered a pact between them still. Her gaze fell before his and she turned away, sure now that for the sake of her pride she must deceive him.

      "No, I can teach you nothing, it seems, except, perhaps, that you should not make the arms of your lady black and blue. Love is a zephyr, mon ami, not a tornado."

      He stared at her, bewildered by the sudden transformation.

      "I—I kissed you," he said stupidly. "You wanted me to."

      "Did I?" she taunted him. "Who knows? If I did"—examining her wrist—"I have now every reason to regret it."

      He stood peering down at her from his great height, his thoughts tumbling into words.

      "Don't lie to me, Olga. You were not content with friendship. No woman ever is. You wanted me to do—what I have СКАЧАТЬ