CHAPTER VIII
It was not until the dinner hour on the following day that Paul and Opal met again. One does not require an excuse for keeping to one's stateroom during an ocean voyage—especially during the first few days—and the girl, though in excellent health and a capital sailor, kept herself secluded.
She wanted to understand herself and to understand this stranger who was yet no stranger. For a girl who had looked upon life as she had she felt woefully unsophisticated. But the Boy? He was certainly not a man of the world, who through years of lurid experience had learned to look upon all women as his legitimate quarry. If he had been that sort, she told herself, she would have been on her guard instinctively from the very first. But she knew he was too young for that—far too young—- and his eyes were frank and clear and open, with no dark secrets behind their curtained lids. But what was he—and who?
When the day was far spent, she knew that she was no nearer a solution than she had been at dawn, so she resolved to join the group at table and put behind her the futile labor of self-examination. She would not, of course, deign to show any leniency toward the offender—indeed not! She would not vouchsafe one unnecessary word for his edification.
But she took elaborate care with her toilet, selected her most becoming gown and drove her maid into a frenzy by her variations of taste and temper.
It was truly a very bewitching Opal who finally descended to the salon and joined the party of four masculine incapables who had spent the day in vain search for amusement. Paul Zalenska rose hastily at her entrance and though she made many attempts to avoid his gaze she was forced at last to meet it. The electric spark of understanding flashed from eye to eye, and both thrilled in answer to its magnetic call. In the glance that passed between them was lurking the memory of a kiss.
Opal blushed faintly. How dare he remember! Why, his very eyes echoed that triumphant laugh she could not forget. She stole another glance at him. Perhaps she had misjudged him—but—
She turned to respond to the greeting of her father and the other two gentlemen, and soon found herself seated at the table opposite the Boy she had so recently vowed to shun. Well, she needn't talk to him, that was one consolation. Yet she caught herself almost involuntarily listening for what he would say at this or that turn of the conversation and paying strict—though veiled—attention to his words.
It was a strange dinner. No one felt at ease. The air was charged with something that all felt too tangibly oppressive, yet none could define, save the two—who would not.
For Paul the evening was a dismal failure. Try as he would, he could not catch Opal's eye again, nor secure more than the most meagre replies even to his direct questions. She was too French to be actually impolite, but she interposed between them those barriers only a woman can raise. She knew that Paul was mad for a word with her; she knew that she was tormenting and tantalizing him almost beyond endurance; she felt his impatience in every nerve of her, with that mysterious sixth sense some women are endowed with, and she rejoiced in her power to make him suffer. He deserved to suffer, she said. Perhaps he'd have some idea of the proper respect due the next girl he met! These foreigners! Mon Dieu! She'd teach him that American girls were a little different from the kind they had in his country, where "what men want, they take," as he had said. What kind of heathen was he?
And she watched him surreptitiously from under her long lashes with a curious gleam of satisfaction in her eyes. She had always known she had this power over men, but she had never cared quite so much about using it before and had been more annoyed than gratified by the effect her personality had had upon her masculine world.
So she smiled at the Count, she laughed with the Count and made eyes most shamelessly at the disgusting old gallant till something in his face warned her that she had reached a point beyond which even her audacity dared not go.
Heavens! how the old monster would devour a woman, she thought, with a thrill of disgust. There were awful things in his face!
And the Boy glared at de Roannes with unspeakable profanity in his eyes, while the girl laughed to herself and enjoyed it all as girls do enjoy that sort of thing.
It was delightful, this game of speaking eyes and lips.
"Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
And the little less, and what worlds away!"
But it was, as she could dimly see, a game that might prove exceedingly dangerous to play, and the Count had spoiled it all, anyway. And a curious flutter in her heart, as she watched the Boy take his punishment with as good grace as possible, pled for his pardon until she finally desisted and bade the little company good night.
At her departure the men took a turn at bridge, but none of them seemed to care much for the cards that night and the Boy soon broke away. He was about to withdraw to his stateroom in chagrin when quite unexpectedly he found Opal standing by the rail, wrapped in a long cloak. She was gazing far out toward the distant horizon, the light of strange, puzzling thoughts in the depths of her eyes. She did not notice him until he stood by her side, when she turned and faced him defiantly.
"Opal," he said, "there was one poet of life and love whom we did not quote in our little discussion to-night. Do you remember Tennyson's words,
"'A man had given all earthly bliss
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips?'
Let them plead for me the pardon I know no better way to sue for—or explain!"
The girl was silent. That little flutter in her heart was pleading for him, but her head was still rebellious, and she knew not which would triumph. She put one white finger on her lip, and wondered what to say to him. She would not look into his eyes—they bothered her quite beyond all reason—so she looked at the deck instead, as though hoping to find some rule of conduct there.
"I am sorry, Opal," went on the pleading tones, "that is, sorry that it offended you. I can't be sorry that I did it—yet!"
After a moment of serious reflection, she looked up at him sternly.
"It was a very rude thing to do, Paul! No one ever—"
"Don't you suppose I know that, Opal? Did you think that I thought—"
"How was I to know what you thought, Paul? You didn't know me!"
"Oh, but I do. Better than you know yourself!"
She looked up at him quickly, a startled expression in her soft, lustrous eyes.
"I—almost—believe you do—Paul."
"Opal!" He paused. She was tempting him again. Didn't she know it?
"Opal, can't—won't you believe in me? Don't you feel that you know me?"
"I'm not sure that I do—even yet—after—that! Oh, Paul, are you sure that you know yourself?"
"No, not sure, but I'm beginning to!"
She made no reply. After a moment, he said softly, "You haven't said that you forgive me, yet, Opal! I know there is no plausible excuse for me, but—listen! I couldn't help it—I truly couldn't! You simply must forgive me!"
"Couldn't help it?"—Oh, the scorn of her reply. "If there had been any man in you at all, you could have helped it!"
"No, Opal, you don't understand! It is because I am a man that I couldn't help it. It doesn't strike you that way now, I know, but—some day you will see it!"
And suddenly she did see it. And she reached out her hand to him, and whispered, "Then let's forget all about it. I am willing to—if you will!"
Forget? He would not promise that. He did not wish to forget! And she looked so pretty and provoking as she said it, that he wanted to—! But he only took her hand, and looked his gratitude into her eyes.
The Count de Roannes came unexpectedly and unobserved upon the climax of the little scene, and read into it more significance than it really had. It was not strange, perhaps, that to him this meeting should savour of clandestine relations and that he should impute to it false motives and impulses. The Count prided himself upon his tact, and was therefore very careful to use the most idiomatic English in his conversation. But at this sudden discovery—for he had not imagined that the acquaintance had gone beyond his own discernment—he felt the English language quite inadequate to the occasion, and muttered something under his breath that sounded remarkably like "Tison d'enfer!" as he turned on his heel and made for his stateroom.
And the Boy, unconscious and indifferent to all this by-play, had only time to press to his lips the little hand she had surrendered to him before the crowd was upon them.
But the waves were singing a Te Deum in his ears, and the skies were bluer in the moonlight than ever sea-skies were before. Paul felt, with a thrill of joy, that he was looking far off into the vaster spaces of life, with their broader, grander possibilities. He felt that he was wiser, nobler, stronger—nearer his ideal of what a brave man should be.