CHAPTER XXVI

The golf course and the casino were crowded next day when Alice arrived. Yet among the throng of men and women, her interest lay only in the meeting of one, as in turn his interest in all the summer company lay only in seeking Alice. She had hardly joined Imogene and the lake coterie when Kimberly appeared.

The players had driven off and the favorites, of whom there were many, could already be trailed across the hills by their following. When the "out" score had been posted, De Castro suggested that the party go down to the tenth hole to follow the leaders in.

A sea-breeze tempered the sunshine and the long, low lines of the club-house were gayly decorated. Pavilions, spread here and there among the trees, gave the landscape a festival air.

On the course, the bright coloring of groups of men and women moving across the fields made a spectacle changing every moment in brilliancy.

Kimberly greeted Alice with a gracious expectancy. He was met with a lack of response nothing less than chilling. Surprised, though fairly seasoned to rebuffs, and accepting the unexpected merely as a difficulty, Kimberly set out to be entertaining.

His resource in this regard was not scanty but to-day Alice succeeded in taxing his reserves. In his half-mile tramp with her in the "gallery," punctuated by occasional halts, he managed but once to separate her from the others. The sun annoyed him. Alice was aware of his lifting his straw hat frequently to press his handkerchief to beads of perspiration that gathered on his swarthy forehead, but she extended no sympathy.

In spite of his discomfort, however, his eyes flashed with their accustomed spirit and his dogged perseverance in the face of her coldness began to plead for itself. When the moving "gallery" had at last left them for an instant behind, Kimberly dropped on a bench under the friendly shade of a thorn apple tree.

"Sit down a moment, do," he begged, "until I get a breath."

"Do you find it warm?"

"Not at all," he responded with negligible irony. "It is in some respects uncommonly chilly." He spoke without the slightest petulance. "For Heaven's sake, tell me what I have done!"

"I don't know what you mean."

"I mean, you are not kind in your manner toward me. I left you--I hoped you would remember--to do a favor for you----"

"For me?" Her tone was not in the least reassuring.

"At least, I conceived it to be for you," he replied.

"That is a mistake."

"Very good. Let us call it mistake number one. I spent five days with Dolly and her guests----"

"Guests," repeated Alice, lingering slightly on the word, as she poked the turf slowly with her sunshade, "or guest?"

"Guest!" he echoed, "Ah!" He paused. "Who has put me wrong in so simple a matter? What I did was no more than to be agreeable to Dolly's guests. I spent much time with the guest of honor at Dolly's repeated requests. She happened to sing a song that pleased me very much, for one particular reason; it was your lovely little Italian air; I am not ashamed to say it brought back pleasant moments. Since she could do nothing else that was so pleasing," he continued, "I kept her singing the song. She became bored and naturally ceased to be good-natured. Then, Dolly asked me to run around by Nantucket, which we could have done in two days. Not to be churlish, I consented. Then the coal gave out, which took another day."

"What a mishap! Well, I am glad to hear the trip went pleasantly."

"If you are, something has gone wrong with you----"

"Nothing whatever, I can assure you."

"You are offended with me."

"I assure you I am not."

"I assure you, you are." He took the sunshade from her hand. "You remember the fable about the man that tried to oblige everybody? He wasn't a refiner--he was a mere miller. At the start I really did my best for three days to entertain Dolly's lovely vampire and at the end of that time she made a face at me--and wound up by telling Dolly my head was full of another woman. Then--to be quite shamefully frank--I had to dodge Lottie Nelson's apologies for her unpleasant temper on an evening that you remember; altogether my lot was not a happy one. My head was full of another woman. You remember you said nobody could resist her charm? I thought of it. What is charm? I often asked myself. I saw nothing of charm in that charming woman. Who can define it? But penetration! She could read you like a printed book. We talked one night of American women. I dared to say they were the loveliest in the world. She grew incensed. 'They know absolutely nothing!' she exclaimed. 'That is why we like them' I answered. 'They are innocent; you are as corrupt as I am.' Then she would call me a hypocrite." He stopped suddenly and Alice felt his eyes keenly upon her. "Is it possible you do not believe what I am saying?"

"Innocent women believe whatever they are told."

"I don't deserve sarcasm. I am telling the simple truth. For once I am wholly at fault, Alice. I don't know what the matter is. _What_ has happened?"

"Nothing has happened; only to-day I seem especially stupid."

"Are you as frank with me as I am with you?"

She made no answer. He drew back as if momentarily discouraged. "If you no longer believe me--what can I do?"

"It isn't at all that I do not believe you--what difference should it make whether or no I believe you? Suppose I were frank enough to admit that something I heard of you had disappointed me a little. What credit should I have for commenting on what in no way concerns me?"

"Anything heard to my discredit should be carefully received. Believe the best of me as long as you can. It will never be necessary, Alice, for any one to tell you I am unworthy; when that day comes you will know it first from me. And if I ever am unworthy, it will not be because I willed to be--only because through my baseness I never could know what it means to be worthy of a woman far above me."

She reached out her hand for her sunshade but he refused to give it back. She tried to rise; he laid his hand on her arm. "A moment! It was about me, was it?" he continued. "Did you receive it cautiously? Put me in your position. How do you think one would fare who came to me with anything to your discredit? Think of it, Alice--how do you think one would fare--look at me."

She looked up only for an instant and as if in protest. But in spite of herself something in her own eyes of confidence in him, some tribute to his honesty, stood revealed, and inspired him with a new courage.

"You say what you hear of me does not concern you. Anything you hear of me does concern you vitally." His intensity frightened her, and thinking to escape him, she still sat motionless.

"Everything I do, important or trivial, has its relation to you. Do you believe me? Alice, you must believe me. You do believe me. How can you say that anything you hear of me does not concern you? It concerns you above every living person. It concerns your happiness----"

"Such wildness--such extravagance!" she exclaimed trying to control her fear.

"I tell you I am neither wild nor extravagant. Our happiness, our very lives are bound up together. It isn't that I say to you, you are mine--I am yours."

The furious beating of her heart would not be stilled. "How can you say such things!"

"I say them because I can't escape your influence in my life. I only want to come up to where you are--not to drag you down to where I am--to where I have been condemned to be from the cradle. If what you hear of me conflicts with what I say to you, believe nothing of what you hear." His words fell like blows. "If I could show you my very heart I could not be more open. It is you who are everything to me--you alone."

Breathless and rigid she looked away. Hardly breathing himself, Kimberly watched her. Her lip quivered. "Oh, my heart!" he murmured. But in the words she heard an incredible tenderness. It moved her where intensity had failed. It stilled the final pangs of revolt at his words. She drifted for an instant in a dream. New and trembling thoughts woke in a reluctant dawn and glowed in her heart like faint, far streamers of a new day.

"Oh, my heart!" The words came again, as if out of another world. She felt her hand taken by a strong, warm hand. "Do you tremble for me? Is my touch so heavy? How shall I ever safeguard the flower of your delicacy to my clumsiness?"

She neither breathed nor moved. "No matter. You will teach me how, Alice. Learning how you can be happiest, I shall be happiest. I feel beggared when I lay my plea before you. What are all my words unless you breathe life upon them? A few things--not many--I have succeeded in. And I succeeded," the energy of success echoed in his confession, "only because I let nothing of effort stand between me and the goal. You have never been happy. Let me try to succeed with your happiness."

A silence followed, golden as the moment. Neither felt burdened. About them was quiet and the stillness seemed to flow from the hush of their thoughts.

"It is easy for you to speak," she faltered at last, "too easy for me to listen. I am unhappy--so are many women; many would be strong enough never to listen to what you have said. I myself should be if I were what you picture me. And that is where all the trouble lies. You mistake me; you picture to yourself an Alice that doesn't exist. If I could return your interest I should disappoint you. I am not depreciating myself to extort compliments--you would supply them easily, I know. Only--I know myself better than you know me."

"What you say," he responded, "might have point if I were a boy--it would have keen point. While to me your beauty--do not shake your head despairingly--your beauty is the delicacy of girlhood, you yourself are a woman. You have known life, and sorrow. I cannot lead you as a fairy once led you from girlhood into womanhood--would that I could have done it! He should be a very tender guide who does that for a woman.

"But I can lead you, I think, Alice, to everything in this world that consoles a woman for what she gives to it. Do not say I do not know you--that is saying I do not know myself, men, women, life--it is saying I know nothing. Modest as I am," he smiled lightly, "I am not yet ready to confess to that. I do know; as men that have lived and tasted and turned away and longed and waited, know--so I know you. And I knew from the moment I saw you that all my happiness in this world must come from you."

"Oh, I am ashamed to hear you say that. I am ashamed to hear you say anything. What base creature am I, that I have invited you to speak!" She turned and looked quickly at him, but with fear and resolve in her eyes. "This you must know, here and now, that I can never be, not if you kill me, another Dora Morgan."

He met her look with simple frankness. "The world is filled with Dora Morgans. If you could be, Alice, how could I say to you what I never have said, or thought of saying, to any Dora Morgan?"

"To be a creature would kill me. Do not be deceived--I know."

"Or do worse than kill you. No, you are like me. There is no half-way for you and me. Everything--or nothing!"

She rose to her feet. He saw that she supported herself for a moment with one hand still on the bench rail. He took her other hand within his own and drew her arm through his arm.

It was the close of the day. The sun, setting, touched the hills with evening, and below the distant Towers great copses of oak lay like islands on the mirrored landscape. They walked from the bench slowly together. "Just a little help for the start," he murmured playfully as he kept her at his side. "The path is a new one. I shall make it very easy for your feet."