"There are detectives shadowing me," Christina said. "Don't deny it—I know!"
"But why, dearest, why?"
"Because they think I killed Jim Ingham."
"Christina! Why should they think such a thing?"
"Why shouldn't they? Don't you?"
She put her finger on his lips to still his cry of protest, and, looking down into his face, her own eyes slowly filled with that brooding of maternal tenderness which seemed to search him through and through. For a moment he thought that her eyes brimmed, that her lips trembled with some communication. But, without speaking, she ran her hand along his arm and a quiver passed through her; taking his face in her two hands she bent and kissed his mouth. In that kiss they plighted a deeper troth than in ten thousand promises. And, creeping close into his breast with a shuddering sigh, she pressed her cheek to his. "Oh, Bryce, you won't let them take me away? I can stand anything but being locked up—I couldn't bear that—I couldn't! What can I do?"
"My dearest, no one in the world can harm you!"
"I came here to be safe, where I could touch you. Let me rest here a little, and feel your heart close to me. Oh, my love, I'm so frightened! I thought I was strong! I thought I was brave and could go through with it! But I can't! I'm tired—to death! All through my soul, I'm cold. It's only here I can get warm!"
"Christina," he asked her, "go through with what?"
She stirred in his arms and drew back. "Look first—ah, carefully!—from the window. What do you see?"
"Nothing but ordinary people passing. And the usual number of waiting taxis."
"Well, in the nearest of those taxis is a detective. He has been following me all the afternoon. He is sitting there waiting for me to come out."
Herrick carried her hand to his lips. "Christina, don't think me a cursed schoolmaster. But it's imagination, dear. You've driven yourself wild with all this worry and excitement. Why, believe me, they're not so clumsy! If they were following you, you wouldn't know it."
"I tell you I've known it for at least two weeks! I'm an actress, and if, as they say, we've no intelligence, only instincts, well then, our instincts are extraordinarily developed. And mine tells me that, over my shoulder, there is a shadow creeping, creeping, looming on my path."
A series of sounds burst on the air. Herrick went to the window. "There, my sweet, the taxi's gone."
"Did no one get out?"
"No one."
He had snatched up her hand again and he felt her relax.
"Well, I ought to be used to shadows; all my girlhood there has been a shadow near me. Bryce, when I was really a child, something happened. Something that changed my whole heart—oh, you shall know before you marry me! I shall find a way to tell you!—It made me a rebel and a cynic; it made me wish to have nothing to do with the rules men make; I had to find my own morality. Only, when I saw you, I felt such a strength and freshness, like sunny places. Bryce!"
"Yes."
"My feeling for Jim was dead a year ago. Do you believe that?"
"Oh, my darling! Why—"
"Because I won't have you think me shameless! Nor that an accident, like death, turned my light love to you! I was just twenty when he first asked me to marry him; I was so mad about him that my head swam. And yet it wasn't love. It was only infatuation and I knew it. I was still young enough for him to be a sort of prince—all elegance and the great world. The last two have been my big years, Bryce. I was rather a poor little girl till then. Even so, I held him off ten months. I felt that there was a curse on it and that it could never, never be! What did I know of men or that great world—well, God knows he taught me! When I did consent to our engagement the fire was already dying. But by that time the idea of him had grown into me. He had always a great influence over me, Bryce, and he could trouble and excite me long after he had broken my dream. Oh, my dear, it was one long quarrel. It was a year's struggle for my freedom! Well, I got my release. I didn't wait for fate." She paused. And then with a low gasp, "All my life I've stood quite alone. I have been hard. I have been independent. I have been brave—oh, yes, I can say it; I have been brave!—but I've broken down. Only, if you will let me keep hold of you, I shall get courage."
"Christina!"
"Do you know how big you are? Or what a clear look your eyes have got? There in that coroner's office—oh, heavens,—among those stones!—Bryce, he was there this afternoon! that man!"
"Ten Euyck? Yes, I know."
"Do you know what he means to do as Police Inspector? He means to run me down! Wait—you've never known. I've kept so still—I didn't want to think of it. Four years ago he payed for the production of a play of his, by a stock company I was with. Oh, my dear, that play! It gave us all quite a chill! He wanted his Mark Antony played like a young gentleman arranging the marriage-settlements. But he took the rehearsals so hard, he nearly killed us." She hesitated. "He was very kind to me. He was too kind. One night, he met me as I was coming out of the theater, and—forgot himself. One of the boys in the company, who was right behind me, slapped him in the face! Do you mean to tell me that he has ever forgotten that? At the inquest he thought he had me down, and the laugh turned against him! Is he the man to forget that?"
"But what can he do?"
"How I detested him!" Christina hurried on. "He taught me, in that one minute, when I was eighteen, how men feel about girls who aren't in their class! Just because I was on the stage, he took it for granted I—Well, he, too, learned something! Since then I've heard about him. He isn't a hypocrite, he's an egoist. I wonder, were some of the Puritans really like that? He's so very proper, and so particular not to entangle himself with respectable women! But with women he calls bad he doesn't mind—because for him bad women don't count, they don't exist! Oh, dear God, how I despise a man who feels like that! How I love you, who never, never could! Does he really know, I wonder, that sometimes it's the coldest of heart who can be made to turn his ships at Actium?—'What can he do?' He can hope I'm guilty! And he can use all the machinery of his office to prove me so!"
"Why, look here, dearest, if he's never revenged himself on the man who struck him—"
Christina gave a shrill little cry. "But, now he has his chance with me! His great spectacular chance! Oh, Bryce, I'm afraid of him, and I was never afraid before!—Dearest dear, I know you can't do anything! But the girl's in love with you, poor thing, and she feels as if you can! I've wanted you—oh, how I've wanted you!—all my life. I've known the dearest fellows in the world, the cleverest, the gamest, the most charming. But they were too much like poor Christina; fidgety things, nervous and on edge. 'You take me where the good winds blow and the eternal meadows are!'—What are you doing?"
He had bowed down to kiss her wrist and he replied, "I'm thanking God I look like a farmer!"
"My poor boy!" cried Christina, breaking her tears with little laughs, "I've got your cheek all wet! Bryce dear, we're engaged, aren't we? You haven't said.—Bryce!"
He slipped back onto the floor, with his head in her lap and her two hands gathered in his one. They were both silent. The little fire was going out and the room was almost dark. And in that happy depth of life where she had led him he was at first unaware of any change. Then he knew that the hands he held had become tense, that rigidity was creeping over her whole body, and looking up, he could just make out through the dusk, the alert head, the parted lips of one who is waiting for a sound. "Bryce," she said, "you were mistaken. That detective has not gone!"
"What do you hear?"
"I don't hear. I simply know." Their senses strained into the silence. "If he went away, it was only to bring some one back. He went to get Ten Euyck!"
"Christina! Tell me what you're really afraid of!"
"Oh! Oh!" she breathed.
"Christina, what was it you couldn't go through with?"
"Death!" she said. "Not that way! I can't!" She rocked herself softly to and fro. "If I could die now!" she whispered.
"You shan't die. And you shan't go crazy, either. You're driving yourself mad, keeping silence." He drew her to her feet, and she stood, shaking, in his arms. "Christina, what's your trouble?"
"Nancy,—that murder—my opening—my danger—aren't they enough?"
"For everything but your conviction that it is you who are pursued, and you who will be punished. Some horrible accident, dear heart, has shown you something, which you must tell. Tell it to me, and we will find that it is nothing."
"Bryce," she said, "they're coming. It's our last time together. Don't let's spend it like this."
"Did you—" he asked her so tenderly that it sounded like a caress, "did you, in some terrible emergency, in some defense, dear, of yourself, Christina—did you fire that shot?"
Her head swung back; she did not answer.
"My darling, if you did we must just take counsel whether to fight or to run. Don't be afraid. The world's before us. Christina, did you?"
"No, no, no!" she whispered. "I did not!" She felt his quiver of relief, and her nervous hands closed on his sleeve. "Oh, if you only knew. There is a thing I long to tell you! But not that! Oh, if I could trust you!"
"Can't you?"
"I mean—trust you to see things as I do! To do only what I ask! What I chose—not what was best for me! Suppose that some one whom—Bryce?"
"Yes?"
"If any one should hear—"
"There is no one to hear."
"You can't tell where they are."
"Christina, can't you see that we're alone here? That the door's locked? That you're safe in my arms? The cab went away. No one followed you. No one even knows where I live; my dear, dear love, we're all alone—"
The door-bell sounded through the house.
He thought the girl would have fallen and his own heart leaped in his side. "Darling, it's nothing. It's for some one else."
"It's for me."
"That's impossible."
There was a knock on the door.
Herrick called—"Who's there?"
"It's a card, sir."
"A card?"
"A gentleman's card, sir. He's down in the hall."
"I can't see any one at present."
"It's not for you, sir; it's for the young lady."
"Did you tell him there was a lady here?"
"He knew it himself, sir."
"Well, she came in here because she felt ill; I'm just taking her home. She can't be bothered."
"He said it was very important, sir. Something she's to do to-morrow," he said.
"Christina! It's only some one about your going away."
"No. It's the end. Take the card."
Springing on the light, he took the card to reassure her. She motioned him to read it. And he read aloud the words "Mr. Ten Euyck."