idea was horrible. Whispering gently to the girl, he tried to explain to her that as things stood, an open withdrawal from the company would be probably opposed. She listened to his explanation anxiously, from time to time pressing the hand she had sought and got hold of in the dark.
'As I told you, I am not rich enough to buy you out so I shall steal you as soon as I can arrange some means of getting away from here. Meantime it would be fatal to be seen together at night. We mustn't give ourselves away. We had better part at once. I think I was mistaken just now; but if, as you say, that poor Mrs. Schomberg can't sleep of nights, we must be more careful. She would tell the fellow.'
The girl had disengaged herself from his loose hold while he talked, and now stood free of him, but still clasping his hand firmly.
'Oh, no,' she said with perfect assurance. 'I tell you she daren't open her mouth to him. And she isn't as silly as she looks. She wouldn't give us away. She knows a trick worth two of that. She'll help—that's what she'll do, if she dares do anything at all.'
'You seem to have a very clear view of the situation,' said Heyst, and received a warm, lingering kiss for this commendation.
He discovered that to part from her was not such an easy matter as he had supposed it would be.
'Upon my word,' he said before they separated, 'I don't even know your name.'
'Don't you? They call me Alma. I don't know why. Silly name! Magdalen too. It doesn't matter; you can call me by whatever name you choose. Yes, you give me a name. Think of one you would like the sound of—something quite new. How I should like to forget everything that has gone before, as one forgets a dream that's done with, fright and all! I would try.'
'Would you really?' he asked in a murmur. 'But that's not forbidden. I understand that women easily forget whatever in their past diminishes them in their eyes.'
'It's your eyes that I was thinking of, for I'm sure I've never wished to forget anything till you came up to me that night and looked me through and through. I know I'm not much account; but I know how to stand by a man. I stood by father ever since I could understand. He wasn't a bad chap. Now that I can't be of any use to him, I would just as soon forget all that and make a fresh start. But these aren't things that I could talk to you about. What could I ever talk to you about?'
'Don't let it trouble you,' Heyst said. 'Your voice is enough. I am in love with it, whatever it says.'
She remained silent for a while, as if rendered breathless by this quiet statement.
'Oh! I wanted to ask you—'
He remembered that she probably did not know his name, and expected the question to be put to him now; but after a moment of hesitation she went on:
'Why was it that you told me to smile this evening in the concert-room there—you remember?'
'I thought we were being observed. A smile is the best of masks. Schomberg was at a table next but one to us, drinking with some Dutch clerks from the town. No doubt he was watching us—watching you, at least. That's why I asked you to smile.'
'Ah, that's why. It never came into my head!'
'And you did it very well, too—very readily, as if you had understood my intention.'
'Readily!' she repeated. 'Oh, I was ready enough to smile then. That's the truth. It was the first time for years I may say that I felt disposed to smile. I've not had many chances to smile in my life, I can tell you; especially of late.'
'But you do it most charmingly—in a perfectly fascinating way.'
He paused. She stood still, waiting for more with the stillness of extreme delight, wishing to prolong the sensation.
'It astonished me,' he added. 'It went as straight to my heart as though you had smiled for the purpose of dazzling me. I felt as if I had never seen a smile before in my life. I thought of it after I left you. It made me restless.'
'It did all that?' came her voice, unsteady, gentle, and incredulous.
'If you had not smiled as you did, perhaps I should not have come out here tonight,' he said, with his playful earnestness of tone. 'It was your triumph.'
He felt her lips touch his lightly, and the next moment she was gone. Her white dress gleamed in the distance, and then the opaque darkness of the house seemed to swallow it. Heyst waited a little before he went the same way, round the corner, up the steps of the veranda, and into his room, where he lay down at last—not to sleep, but to go over in his mind all that had been said at their meeting.
'It's exactly true about that smile,' he thought. There he had spoken the truth to her; and about her voice, too. For the rest—what must be must be.
A great wave of heat passed over him. He turned on his back, flung his arms crosswise on the broad, hard bed, and lay still, open-eyed under the mosquito net, till daylight entered his room, brightened swiftly, and turned to unfailing sunlight. He got up then, went to a small looking-glass hanging on the wall, and stared at himself steadily. It was not a new-born vanity which induced this long survey. He felt so strange that he could not resist the suspicion of his personal appearance having changed during the night. What he saw in the glass, however, was the man he knew before. It was almost a disappointment—a belittling of his recent experience. And then he smiled at his naiveness; for, being over five and thirty years of age, he ought to have known that in most cases the body is the unalterable mask of the soul, which even death itself changes but little, till it is put out of sight where no changes matter any more, either to our friends or to our enemies.
Heyst was not conscious of either friends or of enemies. It was the very essence of his life to be a solitary achievement, accomplished not by hermit-like withdrawal with its silence and immobility, but by a system of restless wandering, by the detachment of an impermanent dweller amongst changing scenes. In this scheme he had perceived the means of passing through life without suffering and almost without a single care in the world— invulnerable because elusive.
CHAPTER THREE
