"Now I've come back, I can hardly bear to go indoors after all. I feel as if I couldn't breathe in a warm room, with curtains over the windows. Would you take me on the terrace? I think I should like just to sit on one of the seats there for a few minutes; and afterward maybe I shall be more ready to go in."
"Come, then," was the brief answer that was somehow comforting to Mary. She began consciously to realize that this man's calm presence helped her. She was grateful, and at the same time smitten with remorse for the faint physical repulsion against him she had never until now quite lost. At this moment she believed that it was entirely gone, and could never return; but she felt that she ought to atone in some way because it had once existed. She took his arm again, of her own accord, and leaned on it with a touch that expressed what she dimly meant to express—confidence in him.
They went down the flight of steps at the end of the Casino, and so to the terrace, which was completely deserted, as Mary had hoped it would be. Here, away from the golden lights of hotel and café windows, the moon had full power, a round white moon that flooded the night with silver.
They turned to walk along the terrace-front of the Casino, facing toward Italy, and away from the harbour half girdled by the Rock of Hercules. They could not see the yacht, but the great illuminated shape rode in Mary's thoughts as it rode on the water. She knew that in coming back along this way she would have to see the harbour, and White Lady blazing with light, pulsing with music. Just yet she could not bear that, and when they came near the eastern end of the terrace she said that she would sit down on one of the seats.
The moonlight had seemed exquisite as an angel's blessing when she looked out between the flags and rose branches, drinking in the words "I love you," as a flower drinks in dew. Now the pale radiance on the mountains was to Mary's eyes wicked, wicked as a white witch fallen from her broomstick. All the world was wicked in its weary pallor; and the dark windows of far-off, moon-bleached villas were like staring eyeballs in gigantic skulls.
She had not meant to talk, but suddenly the fire within her flamed into words. "What have I done—what do I do—that could make people think I am—not good?—make them think they have a right to insult me?"
"Nobody has a right to think that," Hannaford answered, quietly as always. "If any man has insulted you, tell me, and I'll make him sorry."
"I—there is nothing to tell," she stammered, frightened back into reticence. "It's only—an idea that came into my head because of—something I can't explain. But, oh, do be honest with me, Captain Hannaford, if you are my friend, for I can never ask any one else, and I can never ask you again. It's just asking itself now, this question, for I want an answer so much. Is there anything very different about me, and the way I behave, from other girls or women—those who try to be good and nice, I mean?"
It was a strange appeal, and went to the man's heart. If Mary had puzzled him once, and if at first he had thought cynically of her, as he thought of most pretty women he met, love had washed away those thoughts many days ago: and in this moment when she turned to him for help he wondered how it was that he had ever been puzzled. He saw clearly now into the heart of the mystery, and it was a heart of pure rose and gold, like the heart of an altar fire.
"Wait a minute," he said, "before I answer that, and let me ask you a question. Did you ever hear the story or see the play of Galatea?"