One thing was now clear. They must come to a decision. Again in the inward ear of Helen sounded that voice grim with menace: Under which king, Bezonian? To serve both was now impossible.
She didn’t hesitate to tell this stricken, perhaps mortally stricken, gladiator, that she was wholly his. Yet no longer self-secure, a tide of doubt swept his mind.
“Take a little time,” he said. “There is your own life to think of. It may be—I don’t know—that I am no more than a half-crazy egoist; in any case, I have no right to involve you in what may prove the ruin of all our hopes. You have made a position for yourself. Something is due to your career. I have no right to drag you down, I have no right to sink your fine abilities in a cause which in my heart I feel to be already lost.”
Not only the simplicity of the man, but his honesty in this hour of desolating weakness wrung her with pain. “I ask no more than to serve you in any way I can,” she said, her face raised to his.
“I cannot take pity,” he said. “Even though it is a gift which ennobles the giver. Too much is at stake for us—and for the world in which we live.”
With more than a lover’s tenderness which made her whole being quiver like the rays of light upon the path before them, he took her in his arms and pressed kisses upon her forehead and lips. In the next moment, even as she gave herself up body and soul to his embrace, he was able to fight his weakness again. With a shudder he let her go. “Don’t let me drag you over the precipice,” he said. “Nothing now may be able to save me. Therefore, if you still have the power, stand clear.”
XXII
SAUL HARTZ, after a little weighing, that was half contemptuous, of the pros and cons of the matter, decided to accept Mrs. Carburton’s invitation to Doe Hill. He did not know who was to be of the party, nor did he much care. That there would be a house full of entertaining people could be taken for granted.
Rose Carburton was a power in the social world. Her week-ends were famous. For a variety of reasons, not easy to define, the Colossus was seldom honored in this way. It was a little odd perhaps that a man whose flair for “news” took him everywhere on principle should not have found himself oftener in a house where it was generally to be had in liberal quantities. Doe Hill was by no means exclusive. Its doors were open pretty wide to the talents. Saul Hartz was just the kind of man the world would look to find there. He knew Mrs. Carburton in the way he knew so many people; at more than one dinner table he had come under the spell of her attraction, but this was the first time, in recent years at any rate, that she had shown a desire to carry farther a casual acquaintance.
The truth was, no doubt, that they didn’t quite set one another’s genius. Rose Carburton was something of une maitresse femme and the dark shadow of the Colossus had fallen not without menace, as was its way, across her path. Over and beyond the fact that she was one of the most accomplished stalkers of the lion in Europe, she had her private ideas, her philosophy of life, her point of view. She was far more than a mere hunter of notoriety. Not only were her political instincts highly developed, but she had a faculty not always given to her sex, of seeing things “in the round.” Mindful of the commonweal she had learned to look ahead. It may have been that, to a gaze so far-seeing, Saul Hartz was the writing on the wall.