No attitude he might have assumed could have been better calculated to dispel awkwardness and force into the background the seriousness of the two women, whose interests were so inextricably entangled with his own, than the merry, bantering one he adopted when with them.
Even Marcia, who at first had avoided all tête-à-têtes, quivering with dread whenever she found herself alone with him, gradually, beneath the spell of his new self, gained sufficient confidence to perch hatless on the piazza rail beside him in an unoccupied moment and spar with him, verbally.
For he was a brilliant talker—one who gave unexpected, original twists to the conversation—twists that taxed one's power of repartee. The challenge to keep pace with his wit was to her like scouring a long disused rapier and seeing it clash against the deft blade of a master fencer.
Here indeed was a hitherto undreamed-of Stanley Heath, a man whose dangerous charms had multiplied a hundredfold and who, if he had captivated her before now riveted her fetters with every word he spoke, every glance he gave her.
She struggled to escape from the snare closing in on her, then finding combat useless, ceased to struggle and let herself drift with the tide.
After all, why not enjoy the present?
Soon, all too soon, its glamorous delights would be gone and she would be back once more in the uneventful past which had satisfied her and kept her happy until Heath had crossed her path, bringing with him the bewildering adventures that had destroyed her tranquillity.
Would she ever find that former peace, she frequently asked herself. Would her world ever be the same after this magician who had touched it with the spell of his enchantment had left it? For he would leave it. A time must come, and soon now—when like a scene from a fairy play the mystic lights would fade, the haunting music cease, the glitter of the whole dreamlike pageant give place to reality.
It was too beautiful, too ephemeral an idyll to last.
In loving this stranger of whom she knew so little, she had set her heart upon a phantom that she knew must vanish. The future, grim with foreboding, was constantly drawing nearer.