His tone was low but triumphant. She could have no reply to that. It swept away all doubts in his own mind: and he thought her mind was like his own, a lumber room of old-fashioned, very dusty conventions and ideals. If he married her she must be convinced of his sincerity. It did not occur to him that women are not interested very much in the sincerity of a man, that he can be as unfaithful as he likes if he fulfills her conception of beauty and power and genius, that a woman like Evanthia might have a different notion of marriage from his own.
And she did not reply. He moved away from her, up-lifted by the mood of the moment. There could be no reply to that save surrender, he thought proudly.
And Evanthia was astonished. She sat there in the darkness, bound upon a journey which would bring her, she believed, to the amiable and faithless creature who had touched her imagination and who embodied for her all the gaiety and elegance of Europe. And this other man, a man of a distant, truculent, and predatory race, a race engaged in the destruction of European civilization as a sacrifice to their own little tribal god (which was the way Lietherthal had explained it to her) was proposing to marry her. It bereft her of speech because she was busy coördinating in her swift, shrewd mind all the advantages of such a scheme. There was an allurement in it, too. Her imagination was caught by the sudden vision of herself as the chatelaine of a villa. Yes! Her eyes sparkled as she figured it. He came towards her again and, leaning over, buried his face in the clean fresh fragrance of her hair. She remembered that magical moment by the White Tower when he had transcended his destiny and muttered hoarsely that he would go to hell for her. She put the question to herself with terrible directness—could she hold him? Could she exercise the mysterious power of her sex upon him as upon men of her own race? She closed her eyes and sought blindly for an accession of strength in this crisis of her life. She put her arms up and felt his hand on her face. And then, giving way to an obscure and primitive impulse, she buried her teeth in his wrist. And for a long while they remained there, two undisciplined hearts, voyaging through a perilous darkness together.
CHAPTER XIV
Mr. Spokesly, looking down from the bridge at the up-turned and uncompromising face of Joseph Plouff, frowned.
"What does he say?" he repeated uneasily.
"He says keep the course."
"You gave him the note?"
"No, he didn't open the door. He just said, to keep the course. I said 'You mean, don't alter it, Captinne?' and he said, 'No.'"