第20章

``There is no real reason, I suppose,'' the girl answered, smiling, ``except that life is so very easy for me that I have to invent some woes.I should be better for a few reverses.'' And then she went on in a lower voice, and turning her head away, ``In our family there is no woman older than I am to whom I can go with questions that trouble me.Hope is like a boy, as Isaid, and plays with Ted, and my father is very busy with his affairs, and since my mother died I have been very much alone.A man cannot understand.And I cannot understand why Ishould be speaking to you about myself and my troubles, except--'' she added, a little wistfully, ``that you once said you were interested in me, even if it was as long as a year ago.

And because I want you to be very kind to me, as you have been to Ted, and I hope that we are going to be very good friends.''

She was so beautiful, standing in the shadow with the moonlight about her and with her hand held out to him, that Clay felt as though the scene were hardly real.He took her hand in his and held it for a moment.His pleasure in the sweet friendliness of her manner and in her beauty was so great that it kept him silent.

``Friends!'' he laughed under his breath.``I don't think there is much danger of our not being friends.The danger lies,'' he went on, smiling, ``in my not being able to stop there.''

Miss Langham made no sign that she had heard him, but turned and walked out into the moonlight and down the porch to where the others were sitting.

Young Langham had ordered a native orchestra of guitars and reed instruments from the town to serenade his people, and they were standing in front of the house in the moonlight as Miss Langham and Clay came forward.They played the shrill, eerie music of their country with a passion and feeling that filled out the strange tropical scene around them; but Clay heard them only as an accompaniment to his own thoughts, and as a part of the beautiful night and the tall, beautiful girl who had dominated it.He watched her from the shadow as she sat leaning easily forward and looking into the night.The moonlight fell full upon her, and though she did not once look at him or turn her head in his direction, he felt as though she must be conscious of his presence, as though there were already an understanding between them which she herself had established.She had asked him to be her friend.That was only a pretty speech, perhaps; but she had spoken of herself, and had hinted at her perplexities and her loneliness, and he argued that while it was no compliment to be asked to share another's pleasure, it must mean something when one was allowed to learn a little of another's troubles.

And while his mind was flattered and aroused by this promise of confidence between them, he was rejoicing in the rare quality of her beauty, and in the thought that she was to be near him, and near him here, of all places.It seemed a very wonderful thing to Clay--something that could only have happened in a novel or a play.For while the man and the hour frequently appeared together, he had found that the one woman in the world and the place and the man was a much more difficult combination to bring into effect.No one, he assured himself thankfully, could have designed a more lovely setting for his love-story, if it was to be a love-story, and he hoped it was, than this into which she had come of her own free will.It was a land of romance and adventure, of guitars and latticed windows, of warm brilliant days and gorgeous silent nights, under purple heavens and white stars.And he was to have her all to himself, with no one near to interrupt, no other friends, even, and no possible rival.She was not guarded now by a complex social system, with its responsibilities.He was the most lucky of men.Others had only seen her in her drawing-room or in an opera-box, but he was free to ford mountain-streams at her side, or ride with her under arches of the great palms, or to play a guitar boldly beneath her window.He was free to come and go at any hour; not only free to do so, but the very nature of his duties made it necessary that they should be thrown constantly together.

The music of the violins moved him and touched him deeply, and stirred depths at which he had not guessed.It made him humble and deeply grateful, and he felt how mean and unworthy he was of such great happiness.He had never loved any woman as he felt that he could love this woman, as he hoped that he was to love her.For he was not so far blinded by her beauty and by what he guessed her character to be, as to imagine that he really knew her.He only knew what he hoped she was, what he believed the soul must be that looked out of those kind, beautiful eyes, and that found utterance in that wonderful voice which could control him and move him by a word.

He felt, as he looked at the group before him, how lonely his own life had been, how hard he had worked for so little--for what other men found ready at hand when they were born into the world.

He felt almost a touch of self-pity at his own imperfectness; and the power of his will and his confidence in himself, of which he was so proud, seemed misplaced and little.And then he wondered if he had not neglected chances; but in answer to this his injured self-love rose to rebut the idea that he had wasted any portion of his time, and he assured himself that he had done the work that he had cut out for himself to do as best he could; no one but himself knew with what courage and spirit.And so he sat combating with himself, hoping one moment that she would prove what he believed her to be, and the next, scandalized at his temerity in daring to think of her at all.

The spell lifted as the music ceased, and Clay brought himself back to the moment and looked about him as though he were waking from a dream and had expected to see the scene disappear and the figures near him fade into the moonlight.