Part 17

Eternal Loyalty was still and forever to be his guiding principle; and should he not be as true to this actress who had appealed to, him, who perhaps was to tell him something that would prove she had a right to appeal to him, as to any other needy one? Should he shrink because of the irresistible feeling that it was more as a man interested in a woman than as a priest to confess a soul, that he found himself before her door? Should all of his experience go for nothing, and was his character, strengthened by years and chastened by some bitter lessons, still so undependable that he dared not put himself to the test of this woman, even though her mysterious power was so great that she could command a man's love and deserve his hate, yet send him away from her without a hurt and feeling admiration mingled with his horror!

For a man with John Hampstead's chivalrous nature to put a question like this to himself was to answer it in the affirmative. Temptation comes to the minister as to other men, and it had come to John. But had not Marien Dounay herself taught him of what weakness to beware? That flesh is flesh? That juxtaposition is danger? Besides, should not the disastrous consequences which had followed from his contacts with the woman have made him forever immune from the effect of her presence?

John approached and knocked upon the door.

His knock was greeted with a sound like the purr of an expectant kitten, and the knob was turned by Marien herself, with a sudden vigor which indicated that she had bounded instantly to admit him.

Her manner, in most startling contrast to that which she had displayed at the church, was sparklingly vivacious; but her dress was more disconcerting than her manner; in fact, to the minister, it seemed that very same negligee gown whose pleats of shimmering black with their splotches of red, had clung so closely to her form in those never-to-be-forgotten hours in the little apartment on Turk Street in San Francisco. Her hair, too, flowed unconfined as then. The picture called up overwhelming memories, against which the minister in the man struggled valiantly.

"I have not worn it since, until to-night," the woman purred softly, happy as a child over his glance of recognition; but when Hampstead, in uncompromising silence, stood surveying her critically, she asked archly and a bit anxiously, "Are you shocked?"

"Well," he replied a trifle severely, "you must admit that this is not sackcloth and ashes."

"It is my soul, not my body, that is in mourning," Marien urged apologetically, trying the effect of a melting glance, after which, walking half the length of the room she turned again and invited him to lay off his overcoat and be seated. John could not resist the playful calculation of her manner without seeming heartless; and yet he did resist it, standing noncommittally while his eyes sought the circumference of the room inquiringly.

"And look!" went on Marien enthusiastically, for she was trying pitifully by sheer force of personality to recreate the atmosphere of their old relationship in its happiest moments. "See, here is the Roman chair, or at least one like it; and there the divan, piled high with cushions; I am as fond of cushions as ever. You shall sit where you sat; I shall recline where I reclined. We will stage the old scene again."

"Not the old scene," replied the minister, with quiet emphasis, feeling just a little as if he had been trapped.

Still his strength was always sapped on Sunday night; and no doubt in utter weariness, one's power of resistance is somewhat lowered. Besides, Marien was so beautiful and so winning in manner; her arms gleamed so softly in their circle of silk and filmy lace, and there was in the atmosphere of the room an abundance of an indefinable something which was like a rare perfume and yet was not a perfume at all, but that effect of lure and challenge which her mere presence always had upon the senses of this man.

Moreover, it seemed so fitting to see this exquisite creature happy instead of sad that it would have taken a coarser nature than John Hampstead's to break in brutally upon her whimsical happiness of mood. He judged it therefore the mere part of tact to remove his overcoat.

"Julie!" called Marien, and there was a not entirely suppressed note of triumph in her tone.

The little French maid appeared with suspicious promptness from behind swinging portieres to receive the coat and to give the big man, whom she had always liked, shy welcome upon her own account.

True to her nature, Miss Dounay's every movement was theatric. She stood complacently by until the maid had done her service and withdrawn. Then pointing to the Roman chair, she said to Hampstead:

"Sit there and wait. I have something to show you, something beautiful--wonderful--overwhelming almost!"

Hesitating only long enough to see that the minister, although a bit suspicious, complied politely with her request, Marien, with dramatic directness, and humming the while a teasing little tune, followed Julie out through the portieres, but in passing swung the curtains wide as an invitation to her caller's eyes to pursue her to where she stopped before a chiffonier which was turned obliquely across the corner of the large inner room.

Marien's shoulder was toward John, but the mirror beyond framed her face exquisitely, with its hood of flowing hair and the expansive whiteness of her bosom to the corsage, while the long dark lashes painted a feathery shadow upon her cheeks as her eyes looked downward to something before her on the chiffonier. For a moment she stood motionless, as if charmed by the sight on which their glance rested. Then, using both hands, she lifted the object, and instantly the mirror flashed to the watching man the picture of a swaying rope of diamonds. They seemed to him an aurora-borealis of jewels, sparkling more brilliantly than the light of Marien's eyes, as she held them before her face for an instant, and then, with a graceful movement which magnified the beauty of her rounded arms and the smoothly-chiseled column of her throat, threw back the close-lying strands of her hair to fasten the chain behind her neck.

For another second the mirror showed her patting her bosom complacently, as if her white fingers were loving the diamonds into the form of a perfect crescent, which, presently attained, she surveyed with evident satisfaction. Turning, she advanced toward her guest with hands at first uplifted and then clasped before her in an ecstasy of delight, while she laughed musically, like a child intoxicated by the joy of some long anticipated pleasure.

Upon a man whose love of beauty was as great as John Hampstead's, the effect was shrewdly calculated and the result all that heaven had intended.

"Wonderful!" he exclaimed, leaping up to meet her as she advanced. "Splendid! Magnificent!"

Each adjective was more emphatically uttered than the last.

Satisfied beyond measure with the effect of her diversion, the calculating woman drew close with a complete return of all her old assurance and stood like a radiant statue, a happy flush heightening on her cheeks, while the minister, entirely unabashed, feasted his eyes frankly on the beauty of the jewels and the snowy softness of their setting. When, after a moment, Marien made use of his hand as a support on which to pivot gracefully about and let herself down with dainty elegance into the midst of her throne of cushions, Hampstead stood, a little lost, gazing downward at the vision as though spellbound by its loveliness.

For a moment the actress was supremely confident. Breathing softly, her dark eyes swimming like pools of liquid light, into which her long lashes cast a fringe of foliate shadows, she contemplated John Hampstead, tall, strong, clean, healthful looking, his yellow hair, his high-arched viking brows, the look of kindliness and the cast of nobility into which the years had moulded his features, until it seemed to her that she must spring up and drag him down to her lair of cushions like a prize.

But she made no impulsive move. Instead, she breathed softly: "Doctor Hampstead, will you touch that button, please?"

John complied courteously, but mechanically, as if charmed. The more brilliant lights in the room were instantly extinguished. What remained flowed from the shrouding red silk of the table lamp so softly that while all objects in the room remained clearly distinguishable even to their detail, there was not a garish beam anywhere.

It was a fitting atmosphere for confession, and even the diamonds in this smothered light seemed suddenly to grow communicative, to multiply their luster, and to break more readily into the prismatic elements of color.

"More and more beautiful," Hampstead murmured, passing a hand across his brow.

"Sit down!" Marien breathed softly, motioning toward the Roman chair.

Hampstead was surprised to find how near the divan the inanimate chair appeared to have removed itself. Had he pushed it absently with his leg, as he made place for her, or had she, or had the thing itself--insensate wood and leather and plush--felt, too, the irresistible thrall of this magnetic, beauty-dowered creature who snuggled amid these silken panniers?

"I do not know diamonds very well," the minister confessed, sinking down into the chair.

"Look at them," Marien said, with a delightful note of intimacy in her voice, at the same time lowering her chin close, in order to survey the jewels as they lay upon her breast.

In John's eyes, this downcast glance gave Marien an expression that was Madonna-like and holy, and this again deepened his feeling of pity for her heartaches, and his anxiety to help her in what it was her whim to mask from him for the moment with all this childish play of interest in her jewels and in her own beauty. But it also disposed him to humor her the more, removing all sense of restraint when he followed the glance of her eye to where the more brilliant stones of the pendant lay in the snowy vale of her bosom, or when, leaning closer still, he could see that their intermittent flashing facets were responding to the pulsing of her heart.

"And what is the amber stone?" he asked innocently.

"Amber!" Marien laughed. "It is a canary diamond, the finest stone of all. It alone cost four thousand dollars."

"Four thousand dollars!" The minister drew in his breath slowly. "It had not occurred to me that there were such jewels outside of royal crowns and detective stories," he stammered. "Four thousand dollars! What did the whole necklace cost?"

"Twenty-two," the actress answered almost boastfully, again bending to survey the blazing inverted arch of jewels.

"Thousand?" The minister's inflection expressed his incredulousness.

"Thousand," Marien iterated with a complacent drop of the voice, and then, while the fingers of one hand toyed with the pendant, went on: "I have a perfect passion for diamonds! That canary stone has temperament, life almost. Perhaps it is a whim of mine, but it seems to me that it reflects my moods. When I am downcast, it is dull and lusterless; when I am happy, it flashes brilliantly, like a blazing sun.

"It is influenced by those whom I am with. It never burned so brilliantly as now. Your presence has an effect upon it. Cup your fingers and hold it for a moment, and see, after an interval, if its luster does not change."

Astonished at the feeling of easy intimacy which had been established between them so completely that he saw no reason at all why he should refuse, Hampstead did as he was bidden, although to hold the brilliant stone it was necessary for the heads of the two to be drawn very close, so that the tawny, wavy, loose-lying locks of the minister and the dark glistening mass of the woman's hair were all but intertwined, while the four eyes converged upon the diamond, and the two bodies were breathless and poised with watching.

Presently the man felt his vision swimming. He saw no single jewel, but a myriad of lights. He ceased to feel the gem in his hollowed fingers, and was conscious instead of a soft, magnetic glow upon the under side of his hand.

In the same instant, he became aware that Marien's eyes no longer watched the stone, but were bent upon his face, and he felt a breath upon his cheek as her lips parted, and she murmured softly:

"John."

This word and touch together gave instant warning to the Reverend Doctor Hampstead of the spell under which he was passing,--a spell mixed in equal parts from the responsiveness of his own nature to all beauty of form, animate or inanimate, and from the subtle sympathy which the rich, seductive personality of Marien Dounay had swiftly conjured. The shock of this discovery was entirely sufficient to break the potency of the charm.

"It did seem to change, I thought," the minister said casually, at the same time slipping his hand gently from beneath the jewel.

By the slightly altered tone in his speech and the easy resumption of his pose in the chair, Marien perceived that the minister and his purpose was again uppermost in her caller.

As for John, slightly irritated with himself, and yet feeling it still the part of tact to show no irritation with Marien, he guided the situation safely past its moment of restraint.

"You said there was something you wished to tell me," he reminded her gently; then added gravely: "That is why I came to-night. I was to be your father-confessor."

The considerateness of Hampstead's tone and manner was as impressive as it was compelling. Marien's face became instantly sober, and she fidgeted for a time in silence as if it were increasingly difficult to broach the subject, but finally she labored out:

"You misunderstood me horribly once--horribly!"

With this much communicated, she stopped as abruptly as she had begun, while a frightened look invaded her liquid eyes.

"Misunderstood you," Hampstead iterated gently, but with firmness, "I understood you so well that except through an impersonal desire to be helpful, I should never have come here."

The very dignity and measured self-restraint of the minister's utterance robbed the woman of her usual admirable self-mastery. She cowered with timid face amid her pillows, as her mind leaped back to that night in the restaurant with Litschi, and the terrible lengths to which she had gone to shock this same big, dynamic, ardent Hampstead from his pursuit of her.

As if it were compromising himself to sit silent while he read her thoughts and heard again in his own ears that terrible speech, the minister went on to say sternly:

"You know that I shrank then, as from a loathsome thing, at the price you were willing to pay for your success. I must forewarn you that the memory does not seem less abhorrent now than the fact did then."

When Hampstead bit out these sentences with a fire of moral intensity burning in his eyes, the quivering figure upon the cushions shuddered and shrank.

"Oh, John!" a broken voice pleaded. "Did I ever, ever say those hateful words? Can you not conceive that they were false? That they were spoken with intent to deceive you, to drive you from me, to leave me free to make my way alone, unhampered, as I knew I must?"

The minister, his face still white and stern, his gray eyes beaming straight through widening lids, declared hotly: "No! I cannot conceive that a good woman would voluntarily smirch herself like that in the eyes of a man who loved her for any other single purpose than the one which she confessed, an ambition that was inordinate and--immoral. That thought was in your speech, and by Heaven"--he shook an accusing finger at her--"I believe it was in your purpose!"

The woman cowered for a moment longer before Hampstead's gaze, then a single dry sob broke from her, while one hand covered her eyes, and the other stretched gropingly to him, across the pillows.

"I had the purpose," she admitted haltingly. "I confess it. Is it not pitiful?" and the lily hand which had felt its way so pleadingly across the embroidered cushions opened and closed its fingers on nothing, with a movement that was convulsive and appealing beyond words.

"Pitiful," the minister groaned. "My God, it is tragic!"

"Yes," she went on presently, in a calmer voice that was more resigned and sadly reminiscent: "I purposed it."

And there she stopped. Her tone was as dry as ashes. This man had surprised her by revealing a startling amount of moral force, which had quickly and easily broken down her coolly conceived purpose to make him believe that his sense of hearing had played him false that night in the restaurant. She had, however, confessed only to what she knew he knew; but the roused conscience of the preacher of righteousness detected this and was not to be evaded. He proposed to confront this woman with her sin.

"You confess only to the purpose?" John demanded accusingly.

The glance of the woman fell before his blazing eye. She had meant to answer boldly, triumphantly; but the sudden fear that she might not be believed made her a coward, and forced the realization that she must not attempt to deceive this man in anything.

"Sometimes one says more than one is able to perform," she whispered weakly. "Sometimes a woman names a price, and does not know what the price means, and when the time of settlement comes, will not pay it--cannot pay it--because there is something in her deeper, more overruling than her own conscious will, something that refuses to be betrayed!" The last words were torn out of her throat with desperate emphasis.

John sat watching the woman critically, with an all but unfriendly eye, while she struggled over this utterance, yet the very manner of it compelled him to believe in her absolute sincerity at the moment. Her revelation was truthful, no doubt, but just what was she revealing? The substance was so contrary to his presumption that his comprehension was slow.

"You mean," he began doubtfully--

Marien took instant courage in his doubt; he was almost convinced.

"I mean," she exclaimed, leaping up with an expansive gesture of her arms, while the jewels, like her eyes, blazed with the intensity of her emotion: "_I mean that I never paid the price!_" Her voice broke into a wild crescendo of laughter that was half delirious in its mingled triumph and joy. Hampstead himself arose involuntarily and stood with a look first of amazement, and then almost of anger, as he suddenly seized her wrists, holding them close in his powerful grasp, while he demanded in tones hoarse with a pleading that was in contrast to his manner:

"Marien, are you telling me the truth?"

The woman faced his searching gaze doubtfully for an instant; then seeing that the man was actually anxious to believe her, she swayed toward him, weakened by relief and joy, as she cried impulsively:

"It is the truth! It is the truth! Oh, God knows it is the truth!"

The fierceness of the minister's grip upon her wrists instantly relaxed, and he lowered her gently to the cushions, where she sat overcome by her emotions while he stood gazing at her as on one brought back from the dead, expressions of wonder and thanksgiving mingled upon his face.

But presently a reminiscent look came into Marien's eyes, and she began to speak rapidly, as if eager to confirm her vindication by the summary of her experiences.

"It was hard, very hard," she began. "It commenced in that first careless, ignorant year I told you about. I was fighting it all the time; fighting it when you were with me. That was really why I broke out of Mowrey's Company. Men--such beasts of men!--proffered their help continually, but not upon terms that I could accept. It seemed, eventually, that I must surrender. I taught myself to think that some day, perhaps when I stood at last upon the very threshold--" she paused and looked over her shoulder at some unseen terror. "But the time never came. I burst through the barriers ahead of my pursuing fears."

The actress ceased to speak and sat breathing quickly, as if from the effects of an exhausting chase.

Hampstead turned and walked to the window, where, throwing up the sash, he stood filling his lungs deeply with delicious, refreshing draughts of the outside air. Coming back, he halted before her to say in tones of earnest conviction:

"Marien"--he had called her Marien!--"I feel as if the burden of years had been removed. Few things have ever lain upon my heart with a more oppressive sense of the awful than this vision of you, so beautiful and so possessed of genius, consecrating yourself with such noble devotion to a lofty, artistic aim, and yet prepared to--to--" His words faded to a horrified whisper, and finding himself unable to conclude the sentence, he reached down and took her hand in both of his, shaking it emotionally while he was able presently to say reverently and with unction:

"God has preserved you, Marien. You owe Him everything."

"It was you who preserved me," she amended, with jealous emphasis and that look again of hungry devotion which he had seen first in the church. "It is you to whom I owe everything."

"I preserved you?" Hampstead asked, now completely mystified, as he remembered with what scornful words and looks she had whipped him from her presence. "I do not understand. We pass from mystery to mystery. Is it that which you said you must tell me?"

"No. I have told you what I wanted to tell you."

The woman was again entirely at her ease, shrugging her beautiful shoulders and yawning lazily,--a carefully-staged and cat-like yawn, in which she appeared for an instant to show sharp teeth and claws, and then as suddenly to bury them in velvet.

The minister stood gazing at her doubtfully.

*CHAPTER XXII*

*PURSUIT BEGINS*

Both recognized that the time had come to close the interview, and each was extremely pleased with its result. Marien had demonstrated to her complete satisfaction that this minister was still a man; that his flesh was wax and would therefore melt. She believed that to-night she had seen it soften.

As for John: He believed that this evening had witnessed a triumph for his tact and his moral force. His sympathy was wholly with the woman. Convinced afresh that there was something sublime in her character, he determined to give her every opportunity to reveal herself to him, and to spare no effort upon his own account to redeem her life from that ingrowing selfishness which he felt sure was making her unhappy now and might ultimately rob her of all joy in its most splendid achievements.

"I shall save three o'clock to-morrow for you," Miss Dounay proposed, as if reading the minister's purpose in his eye.

But John Hampstead was a man of many duties, whose time was not easy to command.

"At three," he objected, "I am to address a mother's meeting.

"At four then," Marien suggested, with an engaging smile.

"At four I have to go with a sad-hearted man to see his son in the county jail," John explained apologetically, as he scanned his date book.

"At five!" persisted Marien, the smile giving way before a shadow of impatience.

John laughed.

"It must seem funny to you," he declared, "but I have an engagement at five-thirty which makes it impossible to be here at five. The engagement itself would seem funnier still; but to me it is not funny--only one of the tragedies into which my life is continually drawn. At that hour I am to visit a poor woman who lives on a house boat on the canal. Monday is her husband's pay day, and he invariably reaches home on that night inflamed with liquor, and abuses the woman outrageously. I have promised to be with her when he comes in. I may wait an hour, and I may wait half the night."

"Oh," gasped Marien, with a note of apprehension. "And suppose he turns his violence on you?"

"Why, then I shall defend myself," John answered, good-humoredly, "but without hurting Olaf."