She ruffled her hair with a tragic little gesture, threw up her hands and disappeared.
It was not long before the humor died out of her. In its wake came the profoundest depression she had ever known. She looked into a blank and colorless future, realizing that a woman may be young until fifty if it is still her privilege to seek and wait and hope, but that when her great joy has touched and passed her, she has buried all that is best of her youth.
She could not stay in her rooms, eloquent of imaginings, but went back to her guests, and clung to them and talked of what interested them, and had never been more hospitable and charming; all the while mechanically counting the years and months and days that lay ahead of her. The depression lasted for hours, during which she wondered if the weight in her brain was crushing the light and reason out of it.
And then the devil entered into her.
CHAPTER IX.
The girls in their gayest muslin frocks, chaperoned by the more sedate Mrs. Cartwright, arrived at the camp at seven. A long table was spread under the redwoods near the bank of the little river, in whose falls bottles lay cooling. Clive was the only other guest. Mary Gordon had been asked; but although she had accepted with philosophy much that was Californian, the informalities of the Bohemian Club were more than she could stand. Clive had been begged to go alone and to stay as late as he liked.
Helena wore a pink muslin frock, her hair in a loose braid. Her eyes were dancing. She looked like a naughty child, and chattered clever nonsense, apparently in the highest of spirits.
An impromptu band played softly out of sight; one could hear the splashing of the river and the faint music of the redwoods. Chinese lanterns, suspended in a row over the table, and from the young redwoods, gave abundant light. It was a very informal dinner. The men wore flannel shirts, smoked when it pleased them, and assumed any attitude conducive to comfort. Clive tipped back his chair against a tree, and felt that it was his duty to rejoice that Mary was not present. Every man waited on himself and on the guests of honor. Helena, at the head of the table, had the one servant constantly at her elbow. It was her tendency to spoil the men she liked, and she encouraged her Bohemians in all their transgressions; which was one of the many reasons why they liked her better than any woman in California.
A course not pleasing her taste, she called for her guitar and sang for them a rollicking song of the bull-fight. Clive leaned forward on the table and watched her: her nostrils expanded as if they had the scent of blood in them; she curled her lips under, clicking her teeth. Her eyes had not wandered to Clive since, upon entering the camp, she had prettily congratulated him.
“Helena, you alarm me,” said Rollins mildly, when she finished. “I haven’t seen you look as wicked as you do to-night for several years. You would give a stranger, Mr. Clive for instance, the impression that you were a cruel little demon, as you sing that song. Of course we know that only heaven in its infinite mercy lends you to us for a little.”