The Arrow of Gold

She listened with slightly parted lips as if to catch some further resonances.

“There is a sort of generous ardour about you,” she said, “which I don’t really understand.  No, I don’t know it.  Believe me, it is not of myself I am thinking.  And you—you are going out to-night to make another landing.”

“Yes, it is a fact that before many hours I will be sailing away from you to try my luck once more.”

“Your wonderful luck,” she breathed out.

“Oh, yes, I am wonderfully lucky.  Unless the luck really is yours—in having found somebody like me, who cares at the same time so much and so little for what you have at heart.”

“What time will you be leaving the harbour?” she asked.

“Some time between midnight and daybreak.  Our men may be a little late in joining, but certainly we will be gone before the first streak of light.”

“What freedom!” she murmured enviously.  “It’s something I shall never know. . . .”

“Freedom!” I protested.  “I am a slave to my word.  There will be a siring of carts and mules on a certain part of the coast, and a most ruffianly lot of men, men you understand, men with wives and children and sweethearts, who from the very moment they start on a trip risk a bullet in the head at any moment, but who have a perfect conviction that I will never fail them.  That’s my freedom.  I wonder what they would think if they knew of your existence.”

“I don’t exist,” she said.

“That’s easy to say.  But I will go as if you didn’t exist—yet only because you do exist.  You exist in me.  I don’t know where I end and you begin.  You have got into my heart and into my veins and into my brain.”

“Take this fancy out and trample it down in the dust,” she said in a tone of timid entreaty.

“Heroically,” I suggested with the sarcasm of despair.

“Well, yes, heroically,” she said; and there passed between us dim smiles, I have no doubt of the most touching imbecility on earth.  We were standing by then in the middle of the room with its vivid colours on a black background, with its multitude of winged figures with pale limbs, with hair like halos or flames, all strangely tense in their strained, decorative attitudes.  Dona Rita made a step towards me, and as I attempted to seize her hand she flung her arms round my neck.  I felt their strength drawing me towards her and by a sort of blind and desperate effort I resisted.  And all the time she was repeating with nervous insistence:

“But it is true that you will go.  You will surely.  Not because of those people but because of me.  You will go away because you feel you must.”

With every word urging me to get away, her clasp tightened, she hugged my head closer to her breast.  I submitted, knowing well that I could free myself by one more effort which it was in my power to make.  But before I made it, in a sort of desperation, I pressed a long kiss into the hollow of her throat.  And lo—there was no need for any effort.  With a stifled cry of surprise her arms fell off me as if she had been shot.  I must have been giddy, and perhaps we both were giddy, but the next thing I knew there was a good foot of space between us in the peaceful glow of the ground-glass globes, in the everlasting stillness of the winged figures.  Something in the quality of her exclamation, something utterly unexpected, something I had never heard before, and also the way she was looking at me with a sort of incredulous, concentrated attention, disconcerted me exceedingly.  I knew perfectly well what I had done and yet I felt that I didn’t understand what had happened.  I became suddenly abashed and I muttered that I had better go and dismiss that poor Dominic.  She made no answer, gave no sign.  She stood there lost in a vision—or was it a sensation?—of the most absorbing kind.  I hurried out into the hall, shamefaced, as if I were making my escape while she wasn’t looking.  And yet I felt her looking fixedly at me, with a sort of stupefaction on her features—in her whole attitude—as though she had never even heard of such a thing as a kiss in her life.

A dim lamp (of Pompeiian form) hanging on a long chain left the hall practically dark.  Dominic, advancing towards me from a distant corner, was but a little more opaque shadow than the others.  He had expected me on board every moment till about three o’clock, but as I didn’t turn up and gave no sign of life in any other way he started on his hunt.  He sought news of me from the garcons at the various cafes, from the cochers de fiacre in front of the Exchange, from the tobacconist lady at the counter of the fashionable Debit de Tabac, from the old man who sold papers outside the cercle, and from the flower-girl at the door of the fashionable restaurant where I had my table.  That young woman, whose business name was Irma, had come on duty about mid-day.  She said to Dominic: “I think I’ve seen all his friends this morning but I haven’t seen him for a week.  What has become of him?”

“That’s exactly what I want to know,” Dominic replied in a fury and then went back to the harbour on the chance that I might have called either on board or at Madame Leonore’s cafe.

I expressed to him my surprise that he should fuss about me like an old hen over a chick.  It wasn’t like him at all.  And he said that “en effet” it was Madame Leonore who wouldn’t give him any peace.  He hoped I wouldn’t mind, it was best to humour women in little things; and so he started off again, made straight for the street of the Consuls, was told there that I wasn’t at home but the woman of the house looked so funny that he didn’t know what to make of it.  Therefore, after some hesitation, he took the liberty to inquire at this house, too, and being told that I couldn’t be disturbed, had made up his mind not to go on board without actually setting his eyes on me and hearing from my own lips that nothing was changed as to sailing orders.

“There is nothing changed, Dominic,” I said.

“No change of any sort?” he insisted, looking very sombre and speaking gloomily from under his black moustaches in the dim glow of the alabaster lamp hanging above his head.  He peered at me in an extraordinary manner as if he wanted to make sure that I had all my limbs about me.  I asked him to call for my bag at the other house, on his way to the harbour, and he departed reassured, not, however, without remarking ironically that ever since she saw that American cavalier Madame Leonore was not easy in her mind about me.

As I stood alone in the hall, without a sound of any sort, Rose appeared before me.

“Monsieur will dine after all,” she whispered calmly.

“My good girl, I am going to sea to-night.”

“What am I going to do with Madame?” she murmured to herself.  “She will insist on returning to Paris.”

“Oh, have you heard of it?”

“I never get more than two hours’ notice,” she said.  “But I know how it will be,” her voice lost its calmness.  “I