Making a detour, they emerged into the park, and strolled back to a place where, seeing, they themselves could not be seen. Sidwell found a bench, and they sat down side by side. The girl offered no suggestion, no protest. Since that row of lights had appeared in the distance she had become passive. She knew beforehand all that was to take place; something that she had decided to accede to, the details of which were unimportant. An apathy which she did not attempt to explain held her. The music heard so near, the glimpses of shifting, faultlessly dressed figures, the loveliness of a perfect night—things that ordinarily would have been intensely exhilarating—now passed by her unnoticed. Her senses were temporarily in lethargy. If she had a conscious wish, it was that the inevitable would come, and be over with.
From without this land of unreality she was suddenly conscious of a voice speaking to her. "Florence," it said, "Florence Baker, you know before I say a word the thing I wish to tell you, the question I wish to ask. You know, because more than once I've tried to speak, and at the last moment you have prevented. But you can't stop me to-night. We have run on understanding each other long enough; too long. I have never lied to you yet, Florence, and I am not going to begin now. I will not even analyze the feeling I have for you, or call it by name. I know this is an unheard-of-way to talk to a girl, especially one so impressionable as you; but I cannot help it. There is something about you, Florence, that keeps me from untruth, when probably under the same circumstances I would lie to any other woman in the world. I simply know that you impersonate a desire of my nature ungratified; that without you I have no wish to live."
Strange and cold-blooded as this proposal would have seemed to a listener, Florence heard it without a sign. It did not even affect her with the shock of the unexpected. It was merely a part of that inevitable something she had anticipated, and had for months watched slowly taking form.
"I suppose it seems unaccountable to you," the voice went on, "that I should have been attracted to you in the first place. It has often been so to me, and I've tried to explain it. Beautiful, you undeniably are, Florence; but I do not believe it was that. It was, I think, because, despite your ideals of something which—pardon me—doesn't exist, you were absolutely natural; and the women I'd met before were the reverse of that. Like myself, they had tasted of life and found it flat. I danced with them, drank with them, went the round of so-called gayety with them; but they repelled me. But you, Florence, are very different. You make me think of a prairie anemone with the dew on its petals. I haven't much to offer you save money, which you already have in plenty, and an empty fame; but I'll play the game fair. I'll take you anywhere in the world, do anything you wish." Out of the shadow an arm crept around the girl's waist, closed there, and she did not stir. "I am writing an English story now, and the principal character, a soldier, has been ordered to India. To catch the atmosphere, I've got to be on the spot. The boat I wish to take will leave in ten days. Will you go with me as my wife?"
The voice paused, and the face so near her own remained motionless, waiting. Into the pause crept the music of the orchestra—beat, beat, beat, like the throbbing of a mighty heart. Above it, distinct for an instant, sounded the tinkle of a woman's laugh; then again silence. It was now the girl's turn to speak, to answer; but not a sound left her lips. She had an odd feeling that she was playing a game of checkers, and that it was her turn to play. "Move!" said an inward monitor. "Move! move!" But she knew not where or how.
The man's arm tightened around her; his lips touched hers again and again; and although she was conscious of the fact, it carried no particular significance. It all seemed a part of the scene that was going on in which she was a silent actor—of the game in which she was a player.
"Florence," said an insistent voice, "Florence, Florence Baker! Don't sit like that! For God's sake, speak to me, answer me!"
This time the figure stirred, the head drooped in assent.
"Yes," she said.
Again the circling arm tightened, and the man's lips touched her own, again and again. The very repetition aroused her.