A Monk of Cruta

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

She stood up in front of a mirror, over which she lighted a shaded candle, and for a moment or two her white hands flashed deftly in and out amongst the dark, silky coils of disordered hair. Paul sat down, and taking up a magazine which he found lying on the divan, tried to concentrate his thoughts upon its contents. But he could not. Every moment he found his eyes and his thoughts straying to that slim, lithe figure, watching the play of her arms and the grace of her backward pose. When she looked suddenly round, on the completion of her task, their eyes met.

"Monsieur Paul, you are like all your sex—curious," she said lightly. "Tell me, then, do you admire my coiffure?"

"Very much," he answered, glancing at the loose Grecian knot into which she had gathered her disordered hair, and confined it with a band of dull gold. "It is quite oriental, and it seems to suit you. Not that I am any judge of such matters," he added quickly.

She moved away with a little, low laugh, and lit two or three more of the shaded candles or fairy lamps which were placed here and there on brackets round the room. Then she rang the bell, and gave some orders to the maid.

"So you think my hair looks oriental," she said, sinking down upon a huge cushion in front of the fire. "That is what the papers call me sometimes—oriental. My early associations asserting themselves, you see. I think I remember more of Constantinople than any place," she went on dreamily, with her eyes fixed on the fire. "I was only a child in those days, but it seemed to me then that nothing could be more beautiful than the City of Mosques and the Golden Horn on a clear summer evening. Why do I think of those days?" she added, shaking her head impatiently. "Such folly! And yet I always think of them when I am lonely."

He was suddenly and deeply moved with altogether a new feeling towards her—one of responsibility. She was alone in the world, and it was his father's hand which had rendered her so. How empty and barren had been his conception of the burden which that deed had laid upon him! Like a flash he seemed to see the whole situation in a new light. If, indeed, she had drifted into ruin, the sin lay at his door. He should have found her a mother; it should have been his care to have watched her continually, and to have assured himself that she was contented and happy. In those few moments the whole situation seemed to change, and he even felt a hot flush of shame at his own coldness towards her. He forgot the dancer, the woman of strange fascinations, the idol of the jeunesse dorée of West London clubdom, and he remembered only the fact that she was a lonely orphan with a most womanly light in her soft, dark eyes, and that he had failed in his duty towards her. Paul was essentially a "manly" man, self-contained, and with all his feelings very much at his control; but at that moment he felt something like a rush of tenderness towards this strange, dark-eyed girl who lay coiled up at his feet. Involuntarily he stretched out his hand and laid it, with an almost caressing gesture, upon her hair.

She started around, as though electrified, and looking up saw the change in his face. It was the first kindly look or speech she had had from him since they had met in London, and it had come so suddenly that it seemed to have a strange effect upon her. A deep flush stole into her face, and her eyes gleamed brilliantly. She drew a long breath, and underneath her loose gown he could see her bosom rising and falling quickly. Yet it all seemed so softened and womanly that the thoughts which he had once had of her seemed like a distant nightmare to him. The ethical and physical horror of her being—of her ever becoming—what he feared, rose up strong within him, and deepened at once his sense of responsibility towards her, and his new-born tenderness. He took her hand gently, and was startled to find how cold it was.

"So you do feel lonely, Adrea, sometimes," he said softly, "although you have so many acquaintances."

The colour burned deeper for a moment in her cheeks. She looked at him half reproachfully, half indignantly.