As Dan helped her out of the limousine she squeezed his hand and favored him with a look of abject adoration.
“I know, dear,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have presumed. It is sweet of you to forgive me.”
Maisie ran quickly to her room, cast herself upon her bed and sought surcease from her rage and chagrin in that soothing form of feminine comfort known as “a good cry.” Indeed, she wept so long and so hard that she decided she was too red and swollen of eye and nose to venture forth where Tamea would see her. So she sent down word by her maid that she had developed a severe headache, as a result of the hard day in the sun, and would have dinner in her room.
CHAPTER XXI
Tamea, secretly delighted at Maisie’s misfortune, expressed to Mrs. Casson and Dan a concern about Maisie which she was far from feeling. Maisie had had him all day, and it had been Tamea’s generous thought to abandon the evening to her rival. However, since fate had willed otherwise, she decided promptly to make the most of her opportunity. After dinner she managed to locate a bridge game with one partner missing. The players were acquaintances of Mrs. Casson’s and it was no trick at all for Tamea to steer her chaperon into this vacancy; whereupon she took Dan’s arm and wandered with him down into the art gallery. There was nothing in the art gallery that Dan could cheer for, and Tamea quickly discovered this. Almost before he knew it, she had him outside and was walking him through the scented starlit night down the road toward Monterey Bay.
As they walked Tamea attempted no conversation. Instinctively she realized that Dan did not want that. He had something on his mind and it was depressing him. What he needed, therefore, was love and sympathy and song; whereat Tamea twined her long soft fingers in his, swung his hand as they walked and commenced softly, very softly, to sing a song of Riva. It must have been a love song, for although Dan Pritchard could not understand a word of it, yet in the soft succession of syllables he caught a hint of passion, of longing, of pathos. . . . Once when, apparently, Tamea had a half rest in her music, she raised his hand to her lips before resuming her crooning love lullaby.
They came to a wooden bench on a low bluff, against which the waves beat at extreme high tides. They sat down, Tamea still holding Dan’s hand. She released it long enough for him to light a cigar, then she drew his arm around her neck and laid her cheek against his. She continued to sing and like a modern Circe she wove her spell about him.
Suddenly she ceased, placed one hand on his cheek and tilted his face toward her.
“Chéri,” she whispered, “I love you with all my heart and soul.”
He stared at her incredulously. He seemed to be thinking of something else—and he was. He was thinking how different—this—from his experience of that afternoon with Maisie.