“Margarita!” he called. No answer broke the quiet. His second call, however, brought her from her room, a dragging figure with a pale face that Adam had never before seen pale.
“Señor Ad-dam,” she faltered.
The look of her, and that voice, stung Adam out of the gentleness habitual with him. Leaping at her, he dragged her into the light of the door. She cried out in a fear that shocked him. When he let go of her, abrupt and sharp in his motions, she threw up her arms as if to ward off attack.
“Do you think I would hurt you?” he cried, harshly. “No, Margarita! I only wanted to see you—just once more.”
She dropped her arms and raised her face. Then Adam, keen in that poignant moment, saw in her the passing of an actual fear of death. It struck him mute. It betrayed her. What had been the dalliance of yesterday, playful and passionate in its wild youth, through the night had become dishonor. Yesterday she had been a cat that loved to be stroked; to-day she was a maimed creature, a broken woman.
“Lift your face—higher,” said Adam, hoarsely, as he put out a shaking hand to touch her. But he could not touch her. She did lift it and looked at him, denying nothing, still unashamed. But now there was soul in that face. Adam felt it limned on his memory forever—the stark truth of her frailty, the courage of a primitive nature fearing only death, yearning for brutal blows as proof of the survival of jealous love, a dawning consciousness of his honesty and truth. Terrible was it for Adam to realize that if she had been given that choice again she would have decided differently. But it was too late.
“Adios, señorita,” he said, bowing, and backed out of the door. He stopped, and the small pale face with its tragic eyes, straining, unutterably eloquent of wrong to him and to herself, passed slowly out of his sight.
* * * * *
Swiftly Adam strode up the canyon, his fierce energy in keeping with his thoughts. He overtook the Irishman, Regan, who accosted him.
“Hullo, Wansfell, ould fri’nd!” he called. “Don’t yez walk so dom’ fast.”