Chapter 12

death--by men, but Paul will be loved to death--by women."

"Well," suggested another member of the group drily, "when one New York family can move as stolid an old cynic as Staples to eulogy, it must be some family."

"I tell you," protested Staples hotly, "I hate them, but we gain nothing by belittling our enemies. It sets a man's imagination afire to see a strain of remarkable blood proclaiming itself in so diverse a fashion through members of one household; a household that has come from the pinch of want. Take the girl. Leave her beauty out of the question, because beauty is not genius. But her mind is as trenchant as her brother's. She could reign on any throne in Europe and stand out as conspicuous in brilliant contrast to that colorless royalty as a torch flaming among candles. I'll wager that her courage is as unflinching as his and her gifts as varied and remarkable. Why, even old Tom, the father, is, for all his seeming of pompous emptiness, the craftiest and cagiest old chap in the National Union Club. He plays rotten bridge, but he still has a brain in his old head."

"I suppose as far as that goes," commented Mr. Kirk, fortified by the entry of a new disputant into the argument, "that even Nero had his attractive angles of personality."

Thayre laughed and lighted a cigarette. Then as he inhaled deeply he nodded and replied.

"I hold no brief for Nero, but I dare say he was a bit misunderstood."

"Since you've undertaken the modern Nero's defense, suppose you catalogue _his_ good points--aside from a conceded brilliancy in finance," suggested another member of the group.

The Englishman nodded, and began his summary.

"An unswerving loyalty to his friends--until they are guilty of _lèse majesté_; a personal integrity which no man questions; a wit that makes him in his lighter moments a rare companion; a generosity as broad as his fighting ruthlessness is deep; and, finally, a lion-like courage. To me, my lads, those assets seem worth a moment's consideration."

* * * * *

The gardens and grounds of Haverly Lodge were that night such a terrain as best suits the ambuscading warfare of the small god with the bow and darts.

Loraine Haswell was thinking something of the sort as she strolled with Paul Burton away from the dancers, leaving their destination to chance. Kirk had hardly exaggerated when he bracketed the name of this slender and graceful wife of the gigantic broker with that of Mary Burton as the two most beautiful women in society.

They were opposite types, for while Mary was a glowing incarnation of color, rich as a golden morning in blossom-time, Loraine, with heavy masses of softly spun jet coiled above her brow, looking out from eyes that were pools of liquid darkness, might have been the queen of night. But her mouth was a carmine blossom. This evening she wore a gown almost barbaric in its richness of color and pattern, and when she walked ahead of Paul Burton where the path narrowed, it seemed to him that some slim and lithe Cleopatra was preceding him. The waltz music came across the short distance, and Loraine Haswell went with a step that captured the rhythm of the measure. When they had come to a corner of the garden where a fountain tinkled in shadow and only a lacey strand or two of moonlight fell on the grass, she halted with her outstretched arms resting lightly on the tall basin, and let her fingers dip into the clear water while she turned to smile on him.

"Do you know, Mrs. Haswell," Paul spoke low and with a musical thrill in his voice, "you are the loveliest creature in captivity tonight? Your loveliness is to a man's imagination what Wilde said white hyacinths are to the soul--worth going without bread for."

She laughed, but into her mirth there crept, or was injected as the case may be, a note of wistfulness.

"In captivity," she repeated, slowly. "I am always in captivity."

With most men Paul was diffident and prone to silence, but something in his effete nature gave him confidence with women. He had been flattered into a sort of assurance that they found him irresistible. They thought him clairvoyantly sympathetic--and he was by the very over-refinement of his music and dream-fed temperament.

"The other evening when I left you, I went home and closed my eyes and sat alone--thinking of you," he told her. "To me all that is fine beyond words I try to translate into music. Where words--even poetry--fail, notes begin. So at the piano I tried to express something like a portrayal of you--to myself."

She seated herself on a stone bench while he stood looking down at her. Her head was for a moment bent and something in the droop of her shoulders intimated unhappiness.

"Does my improvising music about you offend?" He put the question very gently. "You know that I go to the piano as another man might go to his prayers."

She looked up and shook her head. Then she said softly. "Offend me? No, it makes me very proud.... I was just thinking of something else--that troubled me."

"Of what?" Into the two short words Paul Burton put such a sympathy as only voices of women and partly feminine men can express.

"Of the word you used just now ... captivity."

He seated himself at her side and his hand fell to the edge of the stone bench--where her own fingers lightly rested. The cool satiny touch of the hand his own encountered, which she made no effort to withdraw, affected him as though a clear and silvery note had sounded near him.

Paul was one whose senses were exquisitely attuned.

"Mrs. Haswell--Loraine," he said, and his voice was seductively tender, "you are unhappy."

Slowly she nodded her dark head and her voice was a whisper. "Yes.... Paul, I'm afraid I am just that."

It was the first time they had called each other by their first names. It was the first time that the gradually ripening intimacy between them had had a more propitious setting than a table at Sherry's. Paul Burton had awaited this moment patiently, knowing that it must sometime come. Now he bent toward her until her hair brushed his face.

"It is your right to find life a thing of joy," he whispered. "Your soul is a flower. It should have the fulness and radiance of sunshine."

"Our rights," she said slowly, "are not always the things we get."

"But just why are you unhappy?" he insisted.

"I guess you summed it up in that one word, Paul ... captivity."

Paul Burton, the easily swayed, the facilely led, rose and paced up and down, and after a few moments he halted before her.

"Doesn't he--your jailer--appreciate you, Loraine?"

She shrugged her lovely shoulders and looked up at him, smiling through lashes that glistened a little.

"As much, I suppose, as a man can appreciate a woman whom he fails to understand. It's not his fault."

"Of course he--cares for you?"

Loraine Haswell shot him a quick inquiring glance. "Yes," she smiled, "he cares enough to persecute me with little jealousies. He cares enough to want me to make love to him when--" she halted and put both hands over her face; through her slight figure ran a faint shudder--"when I can't."

The man pressed his tapering fingers to his temples. He must seem agitated and his emotions lay so ready to call that seeming so was almost being so. Yet in the back of his mind was the thought: "She will be in my arms in five minutes."

Suddenly she rose from her seat. "I oughtn't to say such things to you," she declared in a voice freighted with self-accusation. "Please forget it, Paul. But it's a thing you can understand. You know the emptiness of a life that deals only with material things."

He leaned forward with one knee on the bench and one hand on the fountain basin. She was beautiful and his heart responded to her beauty's challenge.

"To me you can say anything. In me you will always find one who has no interest above your interests." He stopped and took her hands, but she shook her head in gentle negation, and, as he obeyed the unuttered mandate and let his own arms fall at his sides, she rewarded him with a smile that thrilled him like an embrace.

"Len is fine and big and everybody likes him," went on the wife as though bent on being fair at all costs. "Sometimes I think that's the trouble. It's like being married to a standing army. In times of peace one doesn't need a standing army and in times of war it's me that he makes war on."

Loraine rose and started toward the house. Paul followed, her, appraising her beauty with eyes into which a new interest had come. In a moment she turned and halted so suddenly that the man found her face close to his as she spoke. "I don't know what's the matter with me tonight. I feel faint and giddy--and full of undefined longings. I sha'n't sleep--unless--" she looked questioningly up at him--"unless you will play for me, Paul. Will you?"

Then she put out both hands and swayed unsteadily. Paul caught her in his arms and pressed her to him. The fragrance of her breath and the velvet coolness of the cheek he found himself kissing were details that brought an exquisite responsiveness to his senses. He did not know whether she had fainted or was still conscious, for she rested there in his embrace limp and unresisting and wordless.

"What is the matter, dearest?" he whispered, when the first flush of exultation had passed. "What is the matter?"

Slowly the dark fringe of lashes flickered up and the jet eyes gazed languorously into his own. The blossom lips parted over the flashing whiteness of a smile. Still she did not move except to close both her hands tightly on the arms that circled her.

"Paul," she told him, "I ought to be unconscious or--or break away, but I'm just--just forgetting my captivity." Her eyes held his, drawing them hypnotically nearer and he lowered his face till his lips met hers and received from them the answer to his kiss.

Then Loraine Haswell drew away and straightened up. She was a very lovely picture of contrite confusion as she put up both gleaming arms and rearranged the dark hair he had rumpled. All the way to the house she was silent.