Chapter 14

YOUNG PARMALEE--AND THE WOMAN.

He came slinking down the deck of the liner, furtive of eye, uneven of tread. A young man he was--and yet old; for while his body told of youth, his face bespoke age--the unnatural forced age--the hot-housed growth of they who live in the froth of life--in the froth that it is hard to tell from the scum.

He was tall, and well-set-up. His clothes hung well about his body; they were of fine texture and make, yet unpressed, uncared for. He had been handsome; but he was no longer; for the eyes looked forth from hollows in his face. His cheeks were sunken. His lips were leaden. He was unshaven, ungroomed, unkempt.

Looking nervously, this way and that, he made his way among the jostling throngs to one of the passages. Searching with sunken eyes for a numbered door, he knocked upon it with the knuckles of his left hand; his right rested at his side, covered with a handkerchief of white silk.... He knocked; and stepped back, quickly. There was no answer; the door remained shut. He stepped forward again, thrusting the door wide open. The stateroom was empty. He turned. Out upon the deck he strode; then, starting back, he concealed himself in the passageway that he had just left.

Coming down the deck was a woman, a woman darkly beautiful, tall, lithe, sinuous. Great masses of dead black hair were coiled about her head. Her cheeks were white; her lips very red. Eyes heavy lidded looked out in cold, inscrutable hauteur upon the confusion about her. She wore a gown that clung to her perfectly-modelled figure--that seemed almost a part of her being. She carried, in her left arm, a great cluster of crimson roses.

Down the deck she came, slowly, as a queen going to her throne. She turned....

The man hiding in the passageway confronted her. His eyes were burning as of a fever; his whole body shook.... She remained calm, cold, unmoved.

At length, the woman spoke, half smiling:

"You? ... I thought that we were through."

His voice was tense, strained, unnaturally pitched. The words came between clenched teeth.

"You did, eh? You thought you'd throw me over, as you did Rogers, and Van Dam, and the rest of them.... But it won't work--you Vampire!"

Swiftly, he tore from his right hand, the handkerchief that covered it. There was in it a revolver. The bright mouth of the weapon sprang to the white forehead of The Woman.

Yet she did not start--she made no sound, no movement. The smile still dwelt upon her lips. It was only in the eyes that a difference came--in the black, inscrutable eyes. They gleamed now, heavy-lidded as before. Their gaze was fixed straight into the sunken, hate-lit eyes of the man before her, a man who, but for her, might still have been a boy. She bent forward a little.... Her forehead, between the eyes, was now touching the bright muzzle of the weapon. The finger on the trigger trembled-- trembled but did not pull.

Came slowly, sibillantly, from between the smiling red lips:

"Kiss me, My Fool!"

Her eyes still fixed him.... The hand holding the revolver trembled more violently. Slowly the mouth of the weapon sank to lips--to chin--to breast.... It hovered there a moment, just over the heart--the finger twitched a little--twitched but did not pull. It was a finger governed by a vanished will in a shrivelled brain.

Then, suddenly, the revolver leaped--the finger pulled. With a shrill screech of hopeless, hideous imprecation, a shriek that died still-born, the bullet pierced flesh and bone and brain; and that which had been a man that should have been a boy, lurched drunkenly and lay a crumpled nothing upon the deck. There was blood upon the deck--beside the hem of the crimson gown, near to the crimson heel of her shoe. And the gown was caught beneath the body of the boy that was.

She looked down upon him. The smile not even yet had left her lips. With a lithe movement, infinitely graceful, she drew away, disengaging the hem of her crimson garment.... A crimson petal from the great cluster in her arms fell upon it, to lie upon the hollow whiteness of the upturned cheek.... And that was all.

A man--a man that should have been a boy--was gone.... Hurrying, horror- ridden passengers found him there, alone. The doctor came, and stewards, and the captain. They lifted him, and bore him away. Of those who live in the froth of things--the froth that is often the scum--there were several. One of these knew him.

"It's Young Parmalee," he informed them.

And that was all he knew; that, and possibly some other things that are little. But of the great things, he knew nothing. For of these great things, God has told us but little.