Zélie took a handful of pearls and began stuffing them into Marise's mouth. It was suffocation! Marise wrenched herself free of the frozen spell and uttered a shriek.
It waked her; and at the same time she was conscious of another sound—a sound which brought back to her brain a whirling vision of things as they really were.
She remembered the screens, and why they were there.
Garth had bounded up from some resting-place and had knocked over a chair. He must think, either that she was in extremis, or else that she had cried out as an excuse to bring him to her. She saw one of the two screens sway, as if Garth had struck against it inadvertently. Then, hastily she closed her eyes. He must be made to realise that she had truly screamed in her sleep, and that there was no horrid coquettish trick.
Marise lay quite still, so that she hardly breathed; and Garth's steps made scarce a sound; yet she knew that he had come round the screens and was looking at her.
After the things he had said, she was wild to know what that look was like. If she could see his face at that moment, when she'd just given him a fright, she would know without any possible doubt whether he'd spoken the plain truth in hinting (he hadn't exactly said!) that he didn't love her because she had tried him too far. But she couldn't see his face without opening her eyes; and if she opened her eyes he'd know she was awake. He'd suspect that she had screamed on purpose.
The girl tried to breathe with long, gentle sighs, hardly moving her breast, as she did when she played the part of a sleeper on the stage. It was easy enough there; but she couldn't be a good actress after all, because she was unable to control her breath now. Her heart was beating fast, and her bosom rose and fell in jerks.
A long time seemed to pass. Was Garth standing there gazing down at her still, or had he tiptoed away? Marise simply had to know! Surely she could just peep from under those celebrated eyelashes of hers for half a second, without his catching her in the act, if he were there?
The lashes flickered, and were still again. But Marise had seen. Garth was there. He was looking down at her. Yet all her subtleties had been vain. She couldn't read his face. It was as inscrutable as that of the Sphinx, which she knew only from photographs. Presently she heard a slight, almost indefinable sound, and peeping again, saw Garth in the act of disappearing behind a leaf of the taller screen. Had he caught that tell-tale flicker, or not?
Garth went back to his darkened corner of the room, but his brain felt as it had been brilliantly lit up, with a hundred electric candles suddenly turned on in it. They dazzled him. But he composed himself outwardly and lay down again on the crampingly short sofa.