A marrying man

by G. B. Stern

One evening, after sunset, Dacres and Patricia raced on their low-built skeletons down the lonely white mountain-path, that was now rose-flooded to an unearthly radiance. Their old course, on which he had twice beaten her. This time she beat him ... and sprang erect on the snow-bank, dragging away her luge just quickly enough to avert a spill as he came whizzing in her wake. For a second, in exultant anticipation of his applause, she had forgotten.... His hearty "Well done, Pat!" sounded almost real.

"I say, what a run!" She was flushed and tingling from her success, and the speed, and the keen whip of the air.

"I beat you twice, though. I'm not sure that you deserve the binoculars yet. And you won't get another chance, as we go home to-morrow."

Her mood died at the sudden animation betrayed in his last phrase.—Curse the man ... couldn't he behave with outward decency, anyhow? Listlessly she picked up her luge, shook the snow from her shoulders....

She rather thought she deserved more than the binoculars.

But he seemed as impervious to memories as though his faculties were encased in something hard and slippery, from which all flung allusions rebounded ineffectually. And in an hour's time he would be holding her in his arms for the one-step; and his hands would be entirely nerveless; and his dancing automatically perfect....

As Upton had stopped alone down in the valley on the night of their arrival, and had only followed her up to Les Avants the following morning, the other visitors at the hotel, and the staff, and the native peasantry, believed the two to have met accidentally, for the second time; and to be renewing an acquaintance that was rapidly approaching the interesting stage of a formal engagement. Therefore, and as though fate were bent on atoning for its last year's unkindness in the matter, everybody combined to manœuvre that they should invariably be thrown together, and left to themselves. It did not lighten the burden of intercourse, but it added to the situation—at least from Pat's point of view—a certain pungent element of humour. Their combined prowess at all forms of winter-sport had not been forgotten; and they walked isolated and conspicuous: the daring pair who skated so beautifully together, danced so harmoniously together, were so closely matched at ski-ing and luging: "I really forget how many prizes they carried off between them last year...."

Last year. Oh, no danger but that she would hate him enough, when the reaction would set in from this ghastly necessity of playing-up and playing-up; when she would have time to recall and to hate. Safely and surely he was murdering the old Dacres whom she had loved; with every act and look; especially with every act and look left undone.... Thus and thus he was loosening her bondage, as she had intended he should. She was glad she had come, and a thousand times been persuaded of the utter change in him; in a thousand exquisite ways had his indifference pounded into her receptivity. Glad that she was not sitting at home ... a hot fire—a little room-a muffled obstinate sorrow.

Only ... they had planned such a wonderful week!

She checked the rush of thought. Not for that had she come adventuring on the wrong side of the sun; not to give way at the last to a sluggish sentimentalism her soul spurned. Not for that had she wilfully spoilt the fairest message time had as yet whispered; not that she should now hang back to regret its damaged fairness....